Happy New Year and All That

This is how I have been feeling lately.

 

Can I just put a blanket over my head and be done with this year already?

“How was your Christmas?” people ask.

It was a day. It was a day with gifts and a decorated tree and a lovely conversation with my in-laws, who we miss and who live on the other side of the country. My husband and children and I went to the movies. We saw Mary Poppins Returns.  It was nice. It wasn’t as moving as the original; songs from that one, like “Feed the Birds,” still make me cry. There was no equivalent in the new version, nothing truly memorable. It was OK, though. It was all right. I ate too much popcorn at the movies. I came home and cooked a ham that my family enjoyed, except for my newly vegetarian son. He was happy for the potato casserole.  I ate too much ham.

It was fine and good and nice and then it was over.

Now we head toward the New Year.

Can we all agree that 2018 has been a rough year?

Certainly, there was a lot of beauty, a lot to be grateful for. I made a list in late December of last year, a “18 in 2018” list of goals and intentions for the year. I like the word “intention” better than the word “goal.” It feels softer, somehow, more reachable. I got the idea from one of my favorite podcasts, Happier with Gretchen Rubin. You can find the episode here:  http://happiercast.com/199  This idea of “18 in 2018″was a helpful spin for me on the traditional New Year’s resolution list; I kept it with me in my calendar, consulted it frequently, and gave myself the freedom to work on it over the course of the entire year.

Last December, I wrote that I would like to run a 10K race sometime this year. June rolled around and I still hadn’t done anything about it. If that had been a traditional resolution, I would have given up on it by January 15. Because I had the whole year to work with it, though, I realized that it wasn’t too late. I downloaded the Nike Run Club app to my phone, signed up for a 10K race in October, and started following their training plan. And I did it. Without stopping!

Other items from my “18 in 2018” list? I took a class at the adult school on WordPress and gave this blog a new look. We went to Yosemite, the first time for my kids, even though we live just a few hours away. My daughter and I went on a college tour trip. We camped at the beach. I enjoyed near monthly lunches with one of my best friends at the most exotic restaurants we could find in the Sacramento area. We had Himalayan curry and Salvadoran pupusas.  My family and I finally got our passports.

All of this made me happy.

Except today I am staring down the New Year and realizing that my inner landscape today is still marked by many of the same struggles I had at the beginning of the year last year. I haven’t changed in some crucial fundamental areas. Honestly?

I am so very tired of some parts of my sweet self.

I haven’t developed some habits that I wanted to. An item on my “18 for 2018” list that I completely failed to address?  Establishing a consistent, daily Centering Prayer practice. The irony of this is not lost on me, as the purpose of this blog is to chart how Centering Prayer transforms my daily life. Not much, I guess. Not much when I don’t do it.

Also, I am still pathologically resistant to conflict. I am a Nine of the Enneagram. A peacemaker. I avoid tough conversations to my detriment, am often silent when I should speak, and fear the repercussions of telling my truth. I could add “Speak the truth” to my “19 in 2019” list, but am not sure how I would measure that, plus it just scares me.

So that is how the year ends, my friends.  Much gratitude for you who walk with me, for you who are reading. Gratitude that I am not in the same place I was last year. Sadness that I am not where I want to be. And an awareness of the irony that much of my angst is rooted in a desire for success as the world sees it, forgetting that I am loved regardless of what goals I meet or fail to meet over the course of the year. Trying to sit with and hold this contradiction.

It’s where I am today.

Happy New Year to all with love.

Come, Lord Jesus.