It’s the first Sunday of 2019.
New years are supposed to make you feel resolute, optimistic, and hopeful that the best is yet to come, but they can also make you feel drained, battle-weary, and pessimistic about the future. I forced myself to choose realism today - since I swung between both ends, before the day ended. As I’m writing this, I’m telling myself that all I will do, is take one day at a time. On most days, what I find helpful is simply getting up, and showing up, instead of waiting to feel cheerful. I schedule enough things into my day to make me feel productive, and learn enough new things in a week, to feel vital. I don’t underestimate the value of doing the mechanical, until your mind catches up. Feelings are highly overrated, anyway.
We hear a lot of pep talks that present airbrushed versions of people, glossing over dysfunction, as if life is made up of selfies, vacations, summer plans, and parties. How come we don’t hear talks about how it could be a year of suffering, of heartbreak or loss? Of what you could do to strengthen yourself in preparation for a storm? Why do we prefer open and fatuous laughter, over hidden but real pain?
I find David’s sighing so relatable, “Why are you downcast, oh my soul? Why so disturbed within me?” He’s having to talk to himself, to remind himself, and to pick himself up. There’s more than a sliver of hope though; it’s a penetrating beam - “Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him, my Savior and my God”.
So, that’s my anchor for this year - not a blinding optimism about sunshine-filled days, not a vacant sense of impending doom - but a recurring mental note to self:
That I don’t have to pull myself up by the bootstraps,
That I can work hard, without fretful striving,
That I can plan for the future, without issuing deadlines,
That I can forgive freely, without worrying about justice,
And that I can pray effectively, without expecting thunder.
So, why indeed, be downcast, oh my soul?
