It’s that time of year when the pull to turn over a new leaf and change yourself for the better is strong. Gym memberships, budgeting resources and dating app use will skyrocket in the next few weeks as people start off strong in taking steps to meet their goals.
I like the incentive to change your life somehow in the New Year, but I want to try something different in the coming 12 months. Yes, I often have a strong temptation to wish things in my life were different or to wish I was different. I long for what is just around the corner, or what could be just around the corner. However, I think a more fruitful exercise for me would be accepting what is right in front of me in life at this moment.
Embracing where you are now
Things could always be better, easier or more comfortable — when the weather is different, when I have a new job, when I get into a different house or apartment, when I find a spouse, when I have a baby, when I lose weight, when I graduate, when my kids graduate. My life is right now, though. We are only given today.
I remember reading He Leadeth Me by Walter Cizek for the first time while I was engaged. Engagement is such a strange time of limbo — preparing and waiting. My focus was so much on the future — on how much less stressful life would be after I was married. And then Fr. Cizek’s words hit me:
“His will for us was in the twenty-four hours of each day: the people, the places, the circumstances He set before us in that time. Those were the things God knew were important to Him and to us at that moment, and those were the things upon which He wanted us to act.”
Fr. Cizek was an American priest who had hoped to spend his life doing missionary work overseas. Instead, he was captured and placed in solitary confinement and then hard labor for years. It was not the mission field he was expecting, but he chose to accept his new circumstances and embrace them fully. His book helped me realize I was missing opportunities to love and grow in the life I had in front of me because I was just waiting for the life and mission field I wanted.
What brings me joy?
How can I embrace my life as it is right now? There are a few things I do occasionally to reorient my focus on the present moment. I sit down with a pen and paper and list the 10 best things about my life right now. These could run the gamut from environmental and work-related (loving the house I live in right now — its location and space, appreciating the flexibility of work), to health-related (stable mental health, currently sickness-free) to very practical (having enough to eat, the gift of sight and mobility).
I also like to write down several of the moments in my day that bring me joy. Maybe that’s hearing one of my kids giggle uproariously during a read-aloud, or the view of the front yard oak from my upstairs window, or hearing the telltale tread of my husband coming down from work for a lunch break.
After appreciating the positives in my life, for this upcoming year I’m going to make a list of challenges I’m facing. There are daily moments I can predict will be tough for me, as well as ongoing struggles I know I need to navigate in the coming days and weeks. My resolution for the New Year is embracing and living fully these hard moments, as well as the good moments, in my every day.
