After a heady month of the Spiritual, worship, extravagance, generosity, giving
thanks for our many blessings, and thinking of others, tis now the season to turn inward.Tis the season to become self-involved, consumed with
thoughts of our flesh and our mastery of it, enamoured by our own potential,
authoritative over our weaknesses, and obsessed with finding the power to change.
I am not generally a fan of New Year’s Resolutions. I spend
the greater part of each year just trying to love myself, accept myself and make peace with who I am. I don’t
like the thought of beginning each new year by declaring to myself and to the
world that there are things about who I am that I do not like, which I would otherwise
not have the wisdom, the will or the strength to change if not for the fact
that it is now January. While I am a firm believer in self-reflection and in
being open to change, it has been my experience that the kind of mental
fortitude required to begin or end a habit, or alter a pattern of behaviour,
seldom comes to you simply because the pages of a calendar are turned.
And yet – I do get positively giddy when I get to start a
new calendar, like the first snowfall before boots and tires draw up the mud. I
love the glossy feel of the unsullied pages and the smell of the printer’s ink.
I love buying new multi-coloured pens, and plotting out how on top of things I am going to be this
year. I love neatly printing in Pizza Fridays, Garbage Pick-up Days, Birthdays
and Anniversaries, and every other known, fixed, already remembered and
completely anticipated event I can draw to my mind.
I begin my year hopeful – hopeful that at the end of the
year its measured days will be marked full with tidy, colour-blocked events
that have all been predictable, planned and completely within the realm of my
control.
The truth is that most of this past year has been scribbled.
Nothing that really happened is marked
anywhere on the calendar, though I have walked it day by brittle day, felt each
little square crumbling like burnt parchment under the weight of my feet. It’s
not been my favourite year, by a lot. Though it has been rich with love and life and once-in-a-lifetime experiences, huge parts of it have been really painful.
It wasn’t supposed to be that kind of a year. It was
supposed to be my Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy year – 42 – the year I discovered the meaning to life and the universe and everything in it. It was
supposed to be a year of blossoms and fruit, where everything that had been so
slow in growing in me while I waited so patiently for the seasons to change, could
finally, finally burst forth.
It was not supposed to be The Year of the Winnowing. It was not supposed to be the year that I
gave up. But this was the year that I
unclenched my hands and let go, gave
in to the Sifter, blessed the winnowing fan as it scraped and bared my soul,
felt myself tossed and coming down hard as the split husks blew away, looked in
the mirror at the dead seed.
It’s been a whole year of January.
You can’t plan for that. You can’t psyche yourself up for
that kind of change – it isn’t anything you can check off on a calendar or resolve
yourself to. And who would ever choose it?
It is possible that I will look back on this year someday
and I will think, That really was a good year. It’s honestly too soon
to tell what the new seed will bring forth. What I do know is that this year
has forever changed me, and that I am
resolved to spending this new year learning
to love, accept and make peace with this new woman that I have become.
3 comments:
And the good woman you are!!!!
Only God is good. :)
you make me smile.
Post a Comment