This Christmas could have gone a lot worse. I started feeling puny while operating the A/V booth Wednesday night at church, went home and to bed – and by the middle of the night, was running a 102-degree fever and enduring miserable sinusitis pains. I was too sick to go to work the next day, rallied enough Friday to put Sunday’s worship PowerPoints into EasyWorship and to print the orders of worship, then came home and crashed while the rest of my family went out to a Christmas dinner with (and at the treat of) our dear friends, the Rowes.

Saturday morning, Laura discovered that her second mouse Carmel had squeezed out of his cage and into Tuxedo’s. Tuxedo is her brother’s mouse, who welcomed Carmel pretty visciously. Angi and Laura had to take the poor thing to the vet to be put out of his suffering. Then later in the day, Angi took me to the family clinic for a shot – but I survived it.

Sunday morning I was still too far under the weather to be able to go to worship, but I heard it was wonderful: one service at 9:00 a.m., people packed into pews and folding chairs like subway riders (you thought I’d say “sardines,” but sardines don’t sit in pews, folding chairs or subways).

But on Christmas morning I felt good enough to lumber downstairs and open gifts, have breakfast, and relax – even entertain a luncheon guest for a while. It was really a very lovely Christmas.

All those nights when I’d be awakened by almost-hourly hacking-and-wheezing fits, I could go back to sleep pretty easily by thinking about my New Year’s resolutions.

Until last night, when it suddenly occurred to me that all of my new year’s resolutions were about me.

Well, of course they were, you might think; you can’t make somebody else’s for them (which is sometimes a pity…).

No, I mean they were things about me that I wanted for my own sake: To look better. To be perceived better. To feel better about myself.

I didn’t have resolutions that were achievable goals about wanting to become a better listener … more generous … more cooperative and collaborative … more forgiving; less judgmental.

It was good to have achievable goals. But they really need to benefit others and glorify God, first of all.

I have a feeling if I pursue those goals, no one will care greatly whether I’m fourteen pounds overweight or sporadic at blogging or behind on a long-term project or any of those others. Least of all, me.

And 2007 will go better for everybody.