Curves

Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve and therefore a good time to look back on 2013 and reflect on all that happened over the past 12 months. For one thing I remember setting goals last New Year’s Eve (some people call them resolutions…I call them goals) and being really sincere about achieving them. However, I have to admit I failed at most of my goals, but fortunately not all of them.

I’m the type of person that enjoys setting goals and I think it’s because I love challenging myself. And actually, some of my goals were really fun ones. I set a goal to improve my batting average in baseball by 100 points. (That didn’t happen, not even close thanks to too many curve balls!) I also set a goal to play at least one round of golf with a score in the 70’s. (That didn’t happen either, but I did get an 80 several times.) Those are fun goals and even if you don’t achieve them, you have fun trying.

The more important goals though…the serious goals…are the ones that help us become better people both in our personal lives and business careers. Those are usually much harder to achieve. First, it’s not fun to admit to ourselves that we are not perfect. Second, self-improvement takes hard work, sacrifice and dedication. And third, we need to remember that life is always going to throw us a curve from time to time and that’s when we need to turn to God for help. We can’t do it alone but fortunately we are never alone. He walks with us every step of the way.

For me personally, I did set two serious goals this past year. One goal was to become a more patient person, to open the eyes of my heart and appreciate other people more fully. My second goal was to write another 52 Monday Messages with the purpose of inspiring people and perhaps drawing them nearer to God. I can’t say that I totally succeeded at achieving both goals because there were several times when I know I could have been more patient and there was one week late in the year when I failed to create a new Monday Message.

But that got me thinking…. I may not have fully succeeded with my important goals, but I certainly didn’t fail and I’ll tell you why. Life will always throw us some tough curves along the way but as long as we keep trying, we cannot fail. We only fail when we stop trying. So my New Year’s resolution is to keep trying to be a better person each and every day. That’s a curve ball I know I can hit!



There are times in our lives when God throws us a curve,

To intentionally make things unclear.

It’s always for growth or to help us to serve,
Or simply to draw us more near.

       ~ Pastor Michael Cummings