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An Annual QuandaryJanuary 07, 2025
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An Annual Quandary
This is not a new experience. I have successfully survived this 80+ times in my life, and I have been very conscious of the experience at least 65 or more times. So why, when a New Year comes around, do I need to pause, to take stock, to just get everything to stop so I can get off the merry-go-round I often find myself on?
Something in me needs to look back on the year to discover what I might have learned, or perhaps…. should have learned. Invariably I become more aware of my own vulnerability as I have fewer cousins to whom I can send Christmas cards. My social life has had to arrange itself around appointments for medical needs. (Did you know that doctor’s appointments have a way of self-multiplying?) And then there is the mental TO DO list that hangs like a cloud over my head. This year I can check off at least two items, but the list has a way of growing!
Yet there are rays of light that emerge through many of these clouds. The one that I most anticipate and appreciate is the Ursuline Sisters’ tradition of a Holy Hour together in chapel on New Year’s Eve. Having prepared the prayer experience in previous years, I have discovered that the preparation for this time with my Community in the Presence of our God has brought light to many of the experiences during the previous year, whether world-wide or national or local or personal. Sitting with these realities and sharing them under God’s loving gaze has kept me from getting overwhelmed or discouraged about what may lie ahead in the New Year. It has often been the time of insight into how God has been working in my life without my realizing it.
And so, as we leave 2024 behind, I want to take some extra time each day in preparation for this new year. I want to be able to place in my hands all of what was in 2024 and offer it as a blessed gift to God. With God’s support, I will then approach each new day, whatever it brings, as its own unique grace so in 2025, I will be more than prepared with my gift of gratitude to the God Who Loves me.