I don’t know what the problem has been all these years, but I am SO not a Monday person!  I feel like my brain always fell asleep over the weekend (though I was extremely busy with family, church activities, doing an occasional concert, cooking, baking and cleaning) – but I got up Monday mornings definitely having ‘lost my gusto’ somewhere along the line.

I actually felt badly for my Monday students – they just didn’t get ‘all’ of me like they did the rest of the week.  And for the high school students whom I only saw on M, W, F’s, they got 50% of me – at best.

I remember being in a craft store one day and seeing a wooden plaque that one would hang over a doorknob saying “I Don’t Do Mondays”.  I just had to have it!  Taking it home, I hung it on the backdoor in my kitchen.  Subconsciously, I wanted anyone who was in my kitchen to see just exactly what my opinion of a MONday was.  I work with a most amazing young woman in Romania – and she has pretty much the same attitude towards the first day of the work week that I do.  On any one of those given days, I’ll greet her and then ask her how she is.  She’ll respond, “You know – MONNNNday!!   I  find myself even experiencing the same thing with our ‘kids’ at the orphanage.  I usually plan activities for us that really don’t require a lot of energy or thinking on that day.  Sad – I know . . .

Back to the wooden plaque that used to hang on my back door.  One day, my youngest son walked into the kitchen noticing it – asking what was up with it.  I told him that I just couldn’t ‘get going’ on Mondays, and it was never the best or most productive day of the week for me.  To this he answered that he loved Mondays!!  I immediately thought, this one certainly doesn’t belong to the family.  Where did he come from?!!  I then asked him what it was that he loved about Mondays.  This 15-year-old’s response was, “If I have not done so well the week before, this gives me the opportunity to start over and do better this week.  (Again, I ask – ‘where did this kid come from’?!!)   But he was so right and taught his Mum a lesson that I should have been teaching him.  (BTW, I still have difficulty with that first workday of the week, but at least I’m conscious of wanting to make it better.)

I said all that to say this – if one can be cognizant of wanting a new week to be better than the last one, then how much more aware do we need to be of making the New Year better than the last one.  I gave up making New Year’s resolutions longer ago than I can remember.  They didn’t stick.  They just didn’t work.  But! – if we can take a few minutes to think about it, we have in this New Year, 2024 a chance to do better than we did the past twelve months!

For sure, I know that I want to know my Lord better – love Him more – spend more time with Him in the Word – and serve Him with ALL that I have.  A most Blessed, Happy, Productive, and Peaceful New Year to you all.

II Corinthians 5.17 – “So then, if anyone is in Christ, that person is part of the new creation.  The old things have gone away, and look, new things have arrived!”