New Year’s Irresolution

Post Author: Becca Ajer Frantz

Earlier this year, I was at an annual gathering of other local clergy in my denomination. Our speaker for our time together was Dr. Deanna A. Thompson, the Director of the Lutheran Center for Faith, Values, and Community at St. Olaf College. She spoke on a couple of different topics, weaving in her experiences as someone who has been living with incurable cancer since 2008. You can read her story in her book, Hoping for More: Having Cancer, Talking Faith, and Accepting Grace (Cascade, 2012). On our last day together, the topic for Dr. Thompson’s presentation was “Gospel of Irresolution: Illness, Trauma, and Getting to Hope.” It highlighted how illness and trauma can lead us to a place of irresolution, a place where things are not neatly tied up in a bow, no matter how badly we want them to be. 

As we begin a new year, I wonder if this isn’t an idea to lean into. 

Talk of the New Year leads to all kinds of resolutions: weight loss, getting more active, eating healthier, giving up smoking, spending less time on social media, using less plastic… you name it, and someone has probably developed a resolution around it. 

When January 1 hits, at least in the United States, the cultural norm is to resolve to change something to make ourselves better into a more productive, healthier, or virtuous version of ourselves. But the reality is that almost never happens. Never mind the fact that there are a lot of problems with the all-or-nothing way we tend to approach these resolutions, time has shown again and again that they almost never stick. By February, most have been shed like a too-tight piece of clothing we can’t wait to be rid of. 

But what if there was another way? What if, instead of focusing on resolving to change our behaviors or habits, we accepted and embraced a Gospel of Irresolution—the Good News that not everything needs to be completed or perfect or done with the “right” frequency to be good and holy and beneficial?

As a pastor, as someone who is in a leadership role in a congregation, I can see that this is already how I operate as I approach the New Year. As the weeks and days fade as Christmas approaches, I make a whole new to-do list of the stuff that I will get to after Christmas. I have projects, new and half-completed, that take a backseat and remain unresolved until I have the time and energy to get to them. Does that mean that these projects are not worthy? Or that they should be shelved because they are not complete? No! It simply means that I’m okay with them being unresolved for as long as they need to be. 

As a person in relationship with others, I can see times when there might be a discussion or a conflict that is unresolved, but leaving it as such is okay because time, growth, and healing is needed before it can find resolution in a healthy and meaningful way. 

Certainly, we can only push this idea so far. There are things that have hard and fast deadlines and things that cannot go on unresolved. But I think there is a lot we’re also overlooking if we think that everything must be wrapped up. 

This New Year, I encourage you to think about the things in your life and ministry that are unresolved and ponder whether or not there is Good News in keeping them that way. It could be Good News for you, for your ministry setting, and for your family. Where can God still be working in that unresolved space?