Another new year has started and all of the pages of this new “book” are empty. As I was contemplating this fact, I experienced both excitement and trepidation.
Excitement at the thought of all the new journeys I may take and the new experiences I may have but at the same time, a cold fear stabbed at my heart. These new journeys and experiences could involve pain and loss and all sorts of sadness.
Like most people, I avoid pain and sadness and loss the best I can. I am a wimp when it comes to heartache. Give me physical pain any day. I am used to that. I can deal with it. But emotional pain…oy vey…don’t handle that well at all.
As I stand at the threshold of a new year, part of me wants to just stay back in the old familiar. The safe and knowable. The present past. The comfortable. The easy. Experience tells me that I only grow when I am stretched, albeit kicking and screaming, to my limit. Reminds me of being pregnant. As my body stretched and grew, it became uncomfortable and hard to manage and as the time to give birth got closer, the fear of the birthing experience also grew. I prayed to have a C-section as I felt I could deal with the lingering pain afterward versus the acute, short-term pain of natural childbirth (see the correlation?) I got what I prayed for and the night before my child was born as I was laying in the hospital, I wished I could just keep her inside of me where it was safe and I felt “in charge” of what happened to her. The unknown was frightening and eventho being nine months pregnant is no picnic physically, at least it was familiar.
I wish I were a free-spirit, someone who just leaps into the unknown. Someone who’s faith is solid in the fact that they know that no matter what happens, they will be in God’s hands. “To go boldly where no man has gone before”.
I guess I have the power to write part of my story in the new year’s book. I can make changes that while they may be baby steps, start the process of rebirth or reinvention of myself.
I have tried to reinvent myself before but it has always involved the “outer” me, the cosmetic me.
This year I am going to try something else. I am letting the “outer” me be inconsequential. I am letting my hair be gray and am letting it just grow as it will. Seems like my hair and all of it’s personalities have taken up way too much of my life’s time and energy.
Actually, now that I think of it, my whole persona has taken up too much energy. “Should I be like this person?” “Why am I not like that person?” “Is this look too outlandish?” “Is this style really more me?” Blah, blah, blah…. Talk about self-absorbed! No wonder I’m tired all the time…it’s exhausting “Keeping Up With The Queen”. How does Kim Kardashian do it?
So I will allow the chapters of this new year book to write themselves. To see where I will be led. To hand over the reins to my Lord, to lead me where He wants me to be. To rest in the assurance that I am doing exactly what I am supposed to do by just being available and changeable and malleable.
What an extraordinary journey this could be if I just allow it to happen. To go with the flow instead of always trying to direct it. To be swept along instead of fighting the current. To float down the river of life on a raft of trust. (ooo, that’s a good one…feel free to use it anytime!)
As always I will take you with me (kicking and screaming?) and together we will see what the Book of 2014 turns out to be!
As always,
Your Queen…who may or may not be mad
rantingsofamadqueen 