Spiritual Exercises

The New Year: Time to Review and Renew

/ Cheryl Wilcox / Leave a comment

Now that we’re two weeks into 2025, I am finally ready to write again. The end of 2024 was such a whirlwind of busyness. I didn’t plan for that to happen, but it happened once again. Now I’m in that place where my eagerness to change my whole lifestyle has worn off, and I’m realizing that all I have is today. I’m not going to radically change my body, my home, or my habits in a couple of weeks. I’m just going to live one day at a time and focus on turning to God as much as possible each day.

Of course, the first thing I must write is a review of the end of 2024. It was a mixture of traditions and new experiences.

  • There were some field trips with Mary. First to Old Wethersfield, CT with my father-in-law, and then to Salem and Boston with my father, and my brother (who was up from Tennessee) and his girlfriend.
  • Joseph was in a community theater production of Beauty and the Beast.
  • Hannah was in the play, Big Fish, at her high school.
  • Sarah and Rachel sang in a choral concert at the college they both attend.
  • My friend, Carol, and I went on a Miles Christi Spiritual Exercises retreat in Wappingers Falls, New York.
  • We hosted Thanksgiving.
  • We had our annual tree trimming party.
  • Mary and I spent some time with Bobby in New York City. We saw loads of Christmas decorations, and we went to Madame Tussaud’s wax museum for the first time. It was one of the touristy things I had not done yet. 
  • I started a huge project. I made a slideshow of pictures of my Christmases from 1969 until 2024. I did it methodically, and it was very time-consuming. I still haven’t created the DVD yet, but after Christmas we did watch all four parts by connecting a laptop to the TV. A true family movie night.
  • I spent the day with my mom when she had eye surgery.
  • The girls and I went to my nephew Edward’s high school band concert.
  • Matthew turned 26.
  • Joseph turned 24.
  • I created a Christmas musical bingo game to play on Christmas Eve and we tested it out.
  • There was a lot of time spent Christmas shopping and wrapping presents.
  • We took pictures and made a Christmas card.
  • My sister and her family hosted Christmas with my mom.
  • We hosted Christmas Eve with my dad.
  • I attended midnight Mass. Rachel and Hannah sang in the choir.
  • On Christmas morning, we did our annual Santa pancakes and bacon breakfast and opening of gifts with the “kids” and Matthew’s fiancé, Anna.
  • Then we hosted Christmas with Bob’s side of the family on the 26th.
  • I took another trip to NYC with Bobby, Rachel and Hannah. Rachel wanted to see the decorations and Hannah wanted to see the Harry Styles pop-up store. We ended up seeing A Complete Unknown at the Lincoln Square AMC and it was so much fun. We considered New Year’s Eve in Times Square, but I wasn’t feeling up to par, and it was going to rain, so we came home on New Year’s Eve day.

And this brings me to 2025. I started a new method for keeping a schedule. It’s a combination of using a planner and the index card filing system laid out in the book, Sidetracked Home Executives. (These were some of my Christmas gifts from Bobby.) So far, I’m liking how it’s going. Maybe I’ll write a post about that sometime.

Mary and I have gotten back in the groove with homeschooling. For my meals and workouts this year, I decided to do the transformation challenge again. I successfully completed it last year and the results were amazing! Unfortunately, I didn’t keep up with it. I went back to my unhealthy eating habits, and walking occasionally was my exercise. So I’m back to meal prepping on Mondays for the whole week and I’m doing great on that end. I haven’t been keeping up with the workouts. I did a bit too much on the first day and I could barely walk. Then I took a few days off. I’ve been procrastinating a lot when it’s time to work out. I haven’t decided what I’m gonna do about this. I need to pray about it.

I’ve been taking down the Christmas decorations. Bobby turned 55 years old, so we’re the same age again. We celebrated his birthday last Sunday. A box of 60 eggs now costs $26.32. I remember a few years ago, when I first started buying these boxes at Walmart, they were $8.00. I got my haircut and I want to figure out how to style the layers. Or… I could just keep straightening it.

I love a new year with new possibilities!

I did spend some time reading my retreat notes from last November, and once again made some index cards to read every day to keep my focus on what’s most important. My resolutions this year are not really things I want to accomplish, but rather attitudes that I want to have. One of those attitudes is gratitude. I think this writing was helpful to me. I feel grateful for the blessings of 2024.

Writing always helps me to slow down. Sometimes my thoughts seem to go too fast and I feel like I’m not keeping up. I focus on the things that I’m not getting done. I can be way too hard on myself. But when I am still, and very quiet, I know that it’s enough. Everything is as it’s supposed to be at this moment.

And it’s gonna be a year of hope!

Retreat Resolutions

/ Cheryl Wilcox / Leave a comment
Mt. Alvernia Retreat Center, Wappinger’s Falls, NY

In November 2023, I attended a Spiritual Exercises weekend silent retreat for women at the location shown above. Over the past 14 years, I’ve attended many of these retreats preached by the priests of Miles Christi, according to the methods and principles of Saint Ignatius of Loyola.

During the retreats, I make resolutions. In past years, I’ve thought of these as things I would like to do that I think will improve my spiritual life. I would do some of them, but would often forget about them as time passed. I would review them monthly as recommended for the first few months, and then stop as I got busy with life.

Lately, I’ve been thinking I should be taking these resolutions much more seriously. These are not just goals I thought might be nice to achieve. This is guidance I have received as the result of prayer. This is for my own benefit. This is a gift from the God who loves me.

This year I’m trying something new. In January, I reread my retreat notes. I always take a ton of notes. I love taking notes. I write down what the priest says. I write what I think, what I pray, what I “hear.” The conversations in my head are there in black Pilot G-2 05 ink. While I reread my notes, I took notes of the things that I thought were most important and that I could do. (Only with God’s grace.) Then I organized my notes onto index cards. I read these cards every morning. I have to say this is really helping me to keep focused. When I look at the card I ask myself, “Is this something that I will do today?” Most of the time I say yes, because many of the resolutions I want to do daily. Others, like Adoration for example, I might say, “I’ll do that Wednesday.”

On the back of each index card, I’ve written some retreat notes that went along with the resolution. For example, on the back of my Be grateful – don’t complain card is written:

Of course, I’m not doing all of my resolutions perfectly, and all the time. But these cards have certainly helped me maintain my focus, and to notice which ones I am doing regularly, and which ones I’m not doing, which leads me to ask, “Why? What is getting in the way?”

Recently, I’ve been listening to some of Fr. John Hardon’s talks on the Spiritual Exercises. He says that decisions are made with the mind and resolutions are made with the will. I think that this is an interesting distinction. How often do I know with my mind what I think is the right thing to do, yet I do nothing about it? I take no action. The steps of the discernment of spirits are becoming aware, understanding, and taking action. If I discern something to be an inspiration received during meditation, should I be ignoring it or putting it off until some later time? I think of what Mary said at the Wedding at Cana. “Do whatever he tells you.”

In An Introduction to the Devout Life, Saint Francis de Sales says, “… you must not rest, satisfied with general desires and aspirations, but rather turn them into special resolutions for your individual correction and amendment.” And he says later, “Above all, Philothea, you must be careful to retain the resolutions to which you have come through meditation, on your return to active duties. Without this chief fruit of meditation, it becomes not only useless, but positively hurtful, for our mind is to rest, satisfied with the consideration instead of the practice of virtues…”

I don’t know how long this will last. Will I stop reading my cards in the morning? Will I get distracted by a crisis or some trivial pleasure? I don’t know, but just for today, I am putting first things first and I’m feeling very happy.