Mixed-Up Bag of New Year’s Day Emotions

As I wake up to 2009 (I didn’t make it to midnight last night), I feel a mixture of emotions. And you now have the amazing privilege of sitting here and reading this while I sort them all out. (Don’t you feel honored?)

If you want to know what 2008 was like for my family…well, it depends on who you ask. Ask The Wild One, and she’ll tell you it was one of the best years of her life. She got a revelation about living life, living in the moment, taking opportunity…and she lived it. Actually I think it was a word to all of us in the house church, but she was possibly the only one who really “got it.” Anyhow, living that out has totally transformed her. She is healthier, happier, and more hopeful. (Alliteration not intended.)

If you ask The Director about 2008, he’ll tell you pretty much the same thing. He’s seeing his path toward film making laid out for him, and he’s excited about it. Yeah, there’s stuff in his life that bothers him, but overall this has been a good year for him.

For me…2008 pretty much sucked.

Okay, that’s probably too strong. Overall, it was a good year. We moved in the right direction, and I’m happy about that. But on an emotional level, it was painful for me. I don’t like pain. I try to get away from it. I couldn’t do that this year. So that’s why I have mixed feelings about it–it was good, but it was a painful kind of “good”.

2006 and 2007 had been very good years for us overall. After some long and very painful battles, God had led us into a place of rest. It took all of those two years for me to stop the hyperventilating from the previous years, to calm down, to relax, to heal, to enjoy. I was just getting my breath, and just beginning to actually enjoy the green pastures…

…and then 2008 came and broadsided me. Interrupted my two-year nap. I wasn’t ready. (The nerve.)

It actually began on New Year’s Day last year, with a strong sense we felt that 2008 was not going to be as quiet as 2007. It gave me almost a sense of foreboding, a fear of loss. You see, for me, this actually had not just been a time of rest…for me, it was the first bit of real rest I had enjoyed in my life. For even when times had been good, I was so high-strung I could not enjoy them.

Still, aside from a few economic pressures coinciding with the times, I can’t say that any real bad stuff happened in 2008. No traumas, no accidents, no going without meals, no church splits. It’s just that pretty much every insecurity I’ve had has been touched. I feel like someone has gone into my insides with a tiller. After all I’d learned about trusting in God alone…I began to realize how much I was putting trust in other things. The reason I realized this was that suddenly everything felt uncertain, like there was no familiar ground, no comfort zone left at all. This has happened on more levels than I can count, and has affected just about all of my life. It is a control freak’s nightmare.

Just as one example…those of you newer readers might come on this blog and read some of my stuff, and somehow perceive me as having figured all this out with regard to leaving institutional Christianity, and all that jazz. Actually, you’d be surprised at how much I still struggle with leaving the familiar, how much deconstruction I still have in front of me. I know…because this year, it surprised me, even. Because this year, I have been faced with the reality that I must now actually do something about what I’ve been learning. It’s all fun and safe when you’re just talking about it, and that’s how I like things.

Fun. And safe.

But nope–this year, I began to see that something is actually going to be required of me for what I’m learning. And that means I have to let go of the edge of the pool and start swimming. And that terrifies me.

But wait…there’s more. Not only do I have to let go…but the edge of the pool is disintegrating under my fingers.

This is what happens in transition. Everything firm becomes pliable, everything stable becomes unstable. This is what happens in preparation for change. Everything gets mixed up and chaotic. And that’s the word for 2008: TRANSITION.

I know I’m being vague. This is a post about emotions. Deal with it.

Anyhow. As the year progressed, things slowly began to make sense. I started this year with kind of a clean slate, where for the first time in my life, really, I didn’t know where to aim my energies. I’ve never been without a sense of vision, even if it was the wrong one. I had to be honest with myself and say, “I don’t know.” But as time passed, the fog in front of me has begun to clear. I said, begun. I still feel pretty lost, just not quite as lost.

We have had a season of rest, and a time of learning. Now it was coming to be time to apply what we have been learning, and that means…change. 2008 was a year for shaking things up so that in 2009, change can come.

(Geesh. That doesn’t sound like my life. That sounds like the USA. 🙂 That sounds like the world we live in.)

So, yeah. 2008 has been, um, good. 🙂

So what about 2009? Let’s just say I feel very frail and uncertain from the upheaval of 2008…but I feel hopeful about 2009. I realize that as chaotic as I feel inside…God has had a plan, and never once have we left His hand. He knows what’s going on, even when I don’t. I feel like everything that has gone on inside me last year has prepared me for this year. So there is a sense of anticipation for what is to come.

Hopeful. That’s the word. I feel hopeful.

I know these calendar dates are man-made, and they are just how we mark time. God doesn’t go by our calendars, unless He wants to, that is. But in general, this is what I think:

2008 was the year of transition.
2009 is the year of change.

Time will tell. Happy New Year, everyone.