2016 stole more from me that I intended it to--in little ways at first, and then all at once. It was a year of loss, a year of struggle, and a year of troubled chaos. I was in crisis for most of it, sometimes as a result of circumstances, and sometimes, as a result of me.
Every year has the potential to bring us down. I can think of a handful of ways I almost let life destroy me this year. I stumbled through it, stricken and blinded by the confusion, desperately seeking a way out. At times, I didn't think I would make it. I learned that when I am hit hard, I don't hit back. I crumble. I start to disappear, and I get sucked under.
Have you ever felt your brain slipping away from you? It's an unsettling experience, drifting farther and farther from your own soul. You try to grasp hold of anything, everything. But your hands just miss the strands of wholeness that would ground you to yourself, and you watch in horror as it all floats away.
You turn up empty handed, when you were trying to hold on to so much.
What I am finding is that life, yours and everyone else's, is like a rubber band. You are stretched and stretched and stretched, and as you expand you're just trying to hold everything in. But the thing about elastic is that once it's stretched, it never goes back to it's original shape, and you are bound to lose some things in the process.
You think you are going to snap, being stretched like that. And you think all the important things are going to fall out, fall away forever and ever, and never come back. So you keep shoving more things in, trying to fill the space but also trying to hold yourself together.
And this is life:
Stretching and filling.
Fearing and falling.
The thing about rubber bands is that if you stretch them too far, they pop.
And if you don't fill them enough, everything falls out.
So you have to find a balance, and you have to be wise about it.
This year, I let way too many things in that filled space in an unhealthy manner.
Stress. Worry. Chaos.
Fear.
And I let too many things drop out that would have kept me together.
Love. Hope. Joy.
Grace.
My rubber band teetered between popping an collapsing,
and I was not better for it.
Because I was not careful enough about what I let in.
So.
In the spirit of the new year, I am not going to make new years resolutions in the traditional sense.
I'm not going to decide what I'm going to do.
I'm going to decide what I'm not going to do.
Because this year, I made a mess out what was already messy.
I made everything more confusing, more stressful, more toxic.
I want to let go of the things that drove me into darkness.
You see, I didn't have much control this year over the things that happened to me, and sometimes they felt like a cruel, cosmic joke. But. I did have control over how I reacted to them, how I chose to acknowledge and clean up the mess, how I decided to move forward.
Over what I decided to add and what I decided to take away.
I don't want to walk into a storm and stir the waters.
I want to calm the sea.
I want peace.
I want my rubber band to expand in great expectation, and to hold what's good and right and pure.
Because once my rubber band is stretched, I get to choose what to let go of, and what to keep.
I get to decide what I'm going to let push me,
and what gets pushed out.
So.
Rubber band your life. Let yourself be stretched and pulled and pushed towards growth.
But don't fill the space with what doesn't need to be there.
And when you are ready, get rid of what's heavy.
What may cause you to pop.
Because when there's enough space for more, it might as well be what's going to fill you up.
What's going to light you up, from the inside out.
What's going to make you whole.
Stretch, grow.
Let things fall out.
And then do it all again.
Except, this time, differently.
This time, with unwavering peace.
We already know you can make it.
So this year, make it good.
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