New Year's Eve Eve

 

How are you doing today?  Honestly?!  Is your mind racing like a hamster on a wheel?  Do you feel dizzy/disoriented from too much Christmas cheer?  Or are you just ready to check out and binge watch Netflix?  Is your heart full or running on empty or on the sugar high of too many Christmas cookies?  Is your soul soaring or sagging?  Or perhaps you just don’t know.  Perhaps the hustle and bustle of December/this past year with its storms environmentally and politically have left you a bit run down, weary and worn out.  Yes, a few days ago my soul felt its worth on Christmas Eve, but now??  As I prepare to step out of the straw of the stable where we stood in awe gazing at the manger, something within me stirs.  As you prepare to step back into the crowded streets of life as a New Year is about to dawn, where are you?  Physically?  Emotionally?  Spiritually?  Relationally?  Take time this week to listen to your own life sing what it is singing these days.  As you do, hear this blessing from Kate Bowler:

 

a blessing for not your best self

God, I can’t tell which person I will be today:

kind and loving, turn-the-other-cheek and I’ll-be-right-here, soft but strong.

I will keep no record of wrongs.

 

I might be someone else entirely: brittle and judgmental, I’m-taking-my-share and you-deal-with-it-alone, hard but weak. I will keep every record, dammit.

 

I am an accountant in this world that does not give me what I’m owed.

 

God, these multiple selves, you know (of course you know) are parts of a whole.

 

You send the love I have to give.

You grieve the pain that causes me to withhold.

You send your spirit every day not to stitch us back together but to heal every tender part from the inside out.

 

So, in the meantime, bless this generous self,

bless this breakable self,

bless these many parts and make them whole.

 

May God bless the broken, beautiful, less-than-perfect, polish self that is you today and, in the days, to come.  Amen.