Happy New Year!
Today has been quiet so far. Peaceful. A good chance to pray about my Word of the Year.
Yet, my “hangover of reflection” from last night lingers. What does that mean? It means I’ve been feeling fuzzy and unable to focus because I keep reflecting on the past. Maybe you can relate based on your own past year.
Last night for New Year’s Eve, we didn’t have the crowd we usually have filling our home with laughter, food, games, and prayer. It was just us. (Not that that’s small when you have 5 kids with significant others.) But, even amidst the love and laughter, I felt myself on the brink of tears over and over again.
I’m sure it was the long needed “good cry” I’ve desired since I discovered my business was closing and my husband’s job would be over in May. This is going to change us and reshape our lives in a new way and it’s a pretty big change in how I see myself.
Maybe that “good cry” has been on the horizon since I truly recognized how different life is with grown children who are doing what they are supposed to do in breaking away and becoming more independent with less need of me in the same ways anymore. Now, I’m having to learn a new way to be Mom.
Maybe the “good cry” has been building since our world got picked up by the edges and shaken like a rug by a tiny invisible virus. It brought with it so many changes, divisions, and heartaches, and it still seems to be an ever present shadow affecting us all. It also brought to the surface things in me I needed to work through and they weren’t always pretty. God’s using it all to change me for the better, but still… He’s changing me.
Maybe this “good cry” has been simmering underneath the struggle to stay connected to friends and live life the way I want, while also dealing with the new realities we face. It’s caused tension within me and in relationships as I walk the tightrope of respecting and honoring different viewpoints. I’m having to learn to trust myself and not worry about what others think of my choices. I didn’t even fully realize how much I worried about that.
So today, as I looked at my new Word of the Year choices, I realized that I was viewing them from this “hangover of reflection” and that was shaping how I saw my options.
Here’s what I mean.
My choices are:
Transform
Evolve
Grow
Open
Availability
Abandon
Vista
All good choices that stem from an overall theme of Being Made New. As I prayed with each one, I felt a sense of leaving things behind and looking backwards. I am viewing them all through lenses clouded with wishes that things could be the way they were. Instead of feeling excited and joyful about what’s coming, with a sense of ‘Let’s go get this!’, I’m feeling sad.
So, when a new word came to me this morning, CONQUER, this is literally what I wrote in my journal.
“Too bold, not feeling that way.”
Seeing those words move from my mind through my pen, literally made me stop.
“What? I’m not feeling bold enough to conquer the changes God is bringing into my life? Who am I? Who have I allowed myself to become this past year? I’ve always chased carrots and seen challenges as something to push through. What?”
And then I realized that my “hangover of reflection” has been causing my mind and heart to be fuzzy because I’m still longing for the way things used to be. But you know what?
My business has closed.
My husband is losing his job.
My kids are growing up.
My world has a new contagious virus and how we have to do some things differently now.
People in my life have various views on our new reality.
That’s the way it is.
But, how I move forward this year is up to me, not these circumstances.
I don’t want to be afraid of the word Conquer.
I don’t want to be saying, “What do I have to give up to be made new?”
Instead, I want to be thinking, “What is God planning to bless me with as I walk boldly on this new path?”
That’s more like it. Now, to get back to praying over my words and seeing them as challenges to win with my God and not be timid in the face of change.
Oh, and maybe actually pick one.
XOXO,
Barb
Reflections of a Cute Lil Mom 