Writing The Pages Of Our Lives

I have never been big on making New Year's resolutions primarily because I rarely keep them past the first week or two of the new year (some not even that long). That being said, the last year or two I have tried to make resolutions that are more of a spiritual nature. Doing this helps me to be more aware of the fact that I need God for everything, that nothing good I can do can be done on my own.
This year my resolution came early in Advent when I was reading daily meditation from In Conversation With God. The particular meditation was about making an examination of conscience, more specifically, a daily examination of conscience. Fr. Fernandez, the author of the meditation, makes the analogy of this daily examine being "a thorough inspection of what we have written on the page of each unrepeatable day of our lives." He goes on to say:

 "A page of sheer horror can be turned into something good, even very good, by means of repentance and the resolution to begin again with renewed effort on the clean page which our Guardian Angel offers us on God's behalf~ a unique and unrepeatable page, like each unique and unrepeatable day of our life."

I love the idea of the new and clean page. Beginning a new year is like being given a new and clean page, or even a new journal in which to record the thoughts and events of each day of the year. The year is made up of days and each of those days is a clean page to begin again.
Fr. Fernandez gives a wonderful heading for each of these pages; he says:

 "And at the top of these blank pages which we begin to scribble each day...I like to put as a heading just one word; 'Serviam'. I will serve. It is both a desire and a hope..."

So this is my spiritual resolution for this year~to begin each day with the desire and hope of serving God and those He outs in my life to the best of my ability with the help of His grace. And on those days where my page is looking a bit horrific, may I remember to come to Our Lord with contrition and a spirit of repentance for then His mercy will erase the smudges and clean the page.
No one started her days in this desire of serving God more perfectly than Our Lady. As we celebrate her today as the Mother of God, may we ask her intercession in helping us follow her example and say with her each day: "May it be done to me according to His holy will."