As I do most every year, I balked at the thought of making a list of personal New Year’s Resolutions this year. However, I have made a secret resolution or two; maybe the same two I’ve made for the past several years, but that’s neither here nor there. If you see me loading my buggy at Papa’s with healthier fare and watch me pass by on your street clad in comfortable duds and tennis shoes, you’ll know I’m keeping them. But don’t mention it! They’re secret resolutions!

Having been charged with the task of making a list of New Year’s Resolutions for the City of Linden, I have come up with the following ten items for your consideration. Citizens of Linden, may we:

1. Resolve to recognize how much we have to be thankful for even in these tough times.

2. Resolve to actually be thankful – to voice our thanks for our many blessings upon recognizing them.

3. Resolve to focus on the positive even in the face of negative circumstances, which seem to abound all too often.

4. Resolve to share smiles and laughter at every possible opportunity, for these commodities are available in extraordinary abundance.

5. Resolve to forgive – and to remember what a blessing forgiveness has been in our own lives.

6. Resolve to treasure family and friends and to cherish moments spent and memories made with them.

7. Resolve to value the beauty that is God’s creation and to help in some small way to take care of our little corner lot of Heaven on earth which we call Linden and Marengo County.

8. Resolve to enhance ourselves or someone else through education; all of life is teaching and learning, isn’t it?

9. Resolve to nourish the spirit so that the physical and mental will be likewise nurtured.

10. Resolve to realize the opportunity that lies within each day and to lay hold of each one with an open mind and a willing spirit both of which will take us no telling where.

I don’t know if these are fitting resolutions for the collective we that makes us Linden, but I do know that my two secret resolutions seem a little less important to me than they did a little while ago. Happy New Year, Linden! It’s still our time for our town! May it be well with you as our time to shine in 2009 comes gleaming through a few more dark days ahead. As my momma and daddy used to say, respectively, Everything happens for a reason and Thangs are gonna get better!