Every Christmas, after the presents are opened and the wrappings strewn throughout the living room; once dinner is devoured and the dishes are piled in the sink; with my feet aching and family members warring over the rules for their latest board game, I experience a moment of divine relief: Christmas is over and we're cresting the hill toward the New Year.

I'm not much of a New Year's Eve party girl, though. For me, ringing in the new year is the soul and spirit equivalent of an exclusive private spa in the desert or tucked away in the Alps. The kind of place where you enjoy scheduled periods of meditation and deep relaxation. Where you purge and cleanse and soak away your stress and problems in hot mineral springs, or gooey warm mud, or under smooth, heated stones. (I'm cold, can you tell?) It's where you detoxify a year's worth of exposure to unwanted elements. And when it's time to leave, you do so  refreshed and stimulated in mind and body.

I get excited about the potential stored up in the coming 365 days. Peeling back the cellophane on a new calendar stirs up hope like few other things. Perhaps more so that any other time, the beginning of a new year reaffirms my belief that "all things are possible to him who believes" and "all things are possible with God."
No matter what has gone on in the preceding year, good or bad, there's something wonderfully cathartic about setting it all aside and looking forward. That empty calendar is like a blank slate, and you're holding the chalk!

I want to encourage you to DREAM BIG over the next few days. I'm not talking about making a list of loathsome resolutions that look suspiciously like another set of rules you have to keep. I'm talking about the desires of your heart, the goals you've been too hesitant or insecure to put on paper;  the dreams you've got hidden in that niche in your soul where you keep your most treasured thoughts and memories.

New year's is the perfect time to draw those dreams forth. You can grasp the momentum of excitement and hope for the coming year and let it launch you into action. Finding the power to change; the ability to make (and keep) those resolutions; and restoring the ability to dream, and to dream big, is a subject that's near and dear to my heart.

Will all your dreams come true this year? Probably not in their entirety, at least not if you've dreamed big enough. But if you can come to the end of 2010 and say to yourself, "I've made progress toward _______," then you're closer than you were to your dream right now.

So, dear readers, are you willing to share? What are some of YOUR dreams for this year? And what are you planning to DO about them?