I’m not sure how you celebrated New Year’s Day but Nathan and I laid pretty low. I worked in the afternoon and then we spent the evening eating stir fry in front of the Christmas tree while Nathan entertained me with impressions of my favourite dog hacking in the night, a tiny turtle getting friendly with shoe (verbal impression only), and his half body Muppet dancing.
As you might be able to imagine I had many rounds of ‘Stop! Stop! I can’t breathe!! I mean it!’ laughter that left me silent (for once but only briefly) and quite literally left me gasping and begging for air.
Oh that guy.
Once I finally got air in my lungs again we went on with our plans to create a small new tradition.
It was Nathan’s idea. Take two different colours of paper, cut them in to long thin strips, on one colour write down some of the things you were thankful for in 2012 and on the other coloured strips write down some of the things you hoped for in the year to come. Then put them into a jar to read next year as a reminder. Simple.
So we did.
Paper, check! Sharpie, check! Cookies, check! Jar, check!
(Come on you didn’t think we’d try to start a new tradition without cookies did you?)
Once we were done we chattted quite a bit about a few of the things we wrote down (at least the ones I could remember from the time I put them in the jar to when we began the discussion).
Some of the things we came up that we were thankful for in 2012:
* Provisions. Nathan’s job, our savings, the finances we needed for me to cut my work back and also pay for lots of special food and vitamins/supplements.
* Friends. Specifically a special three for me. One whom I could (and would) email, text or talk to day or night, no matter what, I knew I could always ask for help. Another whom was a far away support (proof that you don’t have to be near your friends to make a difference) that I could email over and over with requests for prayer and I knew that he was faithful in doing so daily. And a third who just seemed to know exactly how to take my venting, instability at times and need for her not to say certain things.
* Our dogs. Furry and cute covers a multitude of trials.
* People who ‘got it’. We didn’t have to apologize to them a hundred times for whatever behaviour we were displaying, or have to justify why we (I) were having a difficult time. They didn’t ask us to help them understand, they just did.
A few of our hopes for 2013:
* To come to a place of readiness to love. Both of us want to have our hearts restored to a place where we are open and prepared to love unconditionally the people in our lives, or new additions to them. Whether that means being the best aunt and uncle we can be, welcoming and meeting new friends, or possibly expanding our family via foster parenting or permanent parenting.
* Acceptance. To get to a place where we fully accept the life we’ve been given to a point of being able to move on to do great things with that life, even though it may not be what we had planned initially (or secondly, or lastly).
* More laughter and good memories. We’ve had lots even amidst the challenges of last year, we just ask that those times find us again this coming year.
It’s a simple idea and only took a few minutes but something that meant a lot to us especially entering this year of unknowns. You may want to even try this with yourself or with your family. I’m looking forward to reading the thoughts we each had that we didn’t share with each other and looking back on what we thought of the previous year.
Here’s our jar waiting with both our hopes and our gratitude.
No matter what … there will be good found in this year.
