The light outside the window waning against unlit houses. The trees, bare and dark as the sky closes in around us all. The wind moves against the windows, a creak and moan of settlement from the foundation nuzzling against the earth. Me, looking at you sleeping; your eyelashes closed against your cheeks and I envy the length of contrast of color and contact they have with you.
2018 is leaving us-a ship taking off out of harbor and into the deeper parts of the ocean. I find myself both on the dock waving goodbye and on board waving at myself as I set off into whatever is next. I cannot say I will be unhappy to say goodbye from stationary positions. I cannot say I am happy to be on the ship to who knows where.
I hate not having a roadmap, a plan, a course charted or a direction, a destination of some sort. I do not like not knowing where I am going. I feel anxious and unsure of my footing. I feel aggressive towards myself and those around me. I see that things will be different. I see that life changes and all good comes back. All bad is weather-able. God is always watching, and the greater power hardly ever gives us what we think we need. Surrender is necessary in life and love and goodness; so is fighting for what we deem worthy of fighting for. Do we know what the difference is? I don’t think I did before this year. I was happy to float along in the jetsam of someone else ship. I was happy to be aboard, even if I felt that I didn’t always belong. Now, I find myself captaining something far larger than I could ever imagine and I know no way other than to just continue forward. It is taking all my concentration to put one foot in front of the other. I am faltering on the kindness front. I have often been a position to be kind, to think of others. This year has made me selfish in ways I didn’t know where possible; the inability to listen. The constant gnawing feeling that what I think and feel is most important, or worse, right. I have to check myself all the time, not for insecurity or fear but bullheadedness, arrogance, lack of control, temper, inappropriate anger. Am I better now that I know what these things feel like within my body? Am I better than anyone else because I can name them and look at them as though they were something on a shelf to pick up and put down when I see fit? No, it doesn’t make me any better or worse. It doesn’t make me more in tune if I can see them and not change. It does not make me more self aware to be able to call the bad things by name and then not change them. These things do not make me anything but more complex and more complete.
I am hoping 2019 I can find more of a middle ground between the rocky ocean and the sandy shore. To be able to captain the ship and also patiently wait for it to come into dock. Can I throw off the bow lines and also be there to tie them back up? Can I do that? Can I be all I need to be for me and then for you? Am I worthy of desiring it? Am I strong and soft enough for the task?
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