Happy New Year!
It feels strange to me every year to change over to the next year. 2019 – just looks odd written down to me! Now that all the presents are opened and the merry making is over, it’s time to pack up all the decorations and get started with this fresh new year. What? You’ve already taken all your decorations down? Well, I’m behind then. By the time we got done with Christmas and my parents’ time visiting and my oldest girl’s birthday, I was not ready to put away all the stuff. Then Perry got a cold and all those boxes in the garage for the decorations had to wait. I went back to work on the 31st and spent New Year’s Eve laying on the couch watching the ball drop.
New Year is a weird, conflicted time of year for me. On one hand, I love the feeling of a fresh start, a brand new beginning, the hope of something wonderful ahead. But I also feel pressure to catch up, get stuff done, make that amazing thing happen with the new year. I have this nagging sense that I missed the year behind and am starting the new year already playing catch up. Did I accomplish the goals and dreams from last year? Have I grown in any significant way from who I was a year ago? Why is my storage space still so full of junk that I probably should have given away two years ago? What am I supposed to be doing this year and do I have enough time to get it all done? Now that I think about it, January has felt like this before. I hear other people making resolutions (which I don’t do – read last year’s post on this), and I feel like I should have some specific goal I’m working toward too.
That line of thinking is crazy-making. But I think there’s someone other than me feels the same way, right? I’m pretty sure I’m not alone here. So I decided to take some time (that I didn’t feel like I had) and reflect. I’m really bad at that. My tendency is to barrel through life at full speed, packing in as many events and to-dos as I can get done before I fall out in the bed at night. Unfortunately, that means when I look up, I don’t remember much. I missed the moments.
So I got up around sunrise on January 1st and started reading my journal entries from 2018. I don’t write every day, but I try to write the significant stuff down, ’cause I’ll forget it in a New York minute. The hours before the Rose parade were taken up with reading, meditating, and writing down the 2019 scriptures God gave me. I’ve been doing this the last few years, and it’s been wonderful to keep my mind focused on growing where He’s directing me.
The rest of the day after the parade flew by with feeding and watering children. When I looked up, it was time to go to bed. But I knew I wasn’t finished whatever I was preparing, which aggravated me because I wanted to get started on “doing” 2019. But I didn’t know what to do – I still needed to wait. It was hard and I had to fight to stay in the chair, but I sat and patterned in a journal and did some sand therapy in my mini sandbox.
It’d be nice if I could tell you I’m all better now and that I feel peaceful and ready with a plan for 2019. But I can’t. I’m going to have to take more time to let go of my need to plan and control, because the plan I want to live out this year isn’t mine at all. And I’ll get that plan (or at least the next step) when God wants me to have it. That’s hard, because I want to set the schedule, I want to make the timetable. What I really need this year though, is to grow in my faith. Faith that trusts the timing as it unfolds. Faith that allows time to grow. Faith that will wait.
I waited a long time for this to bloom!
So I’ll color and pattern and walk and listen. And when the next step comes, I’ll take it. I’m looking forward to 2019!
What about you? How do you approach the new year? Please share in the comments below!