Burn Bright, 2023

The new year is approaching, and I’ve enjoyed a rather pensive past couple of weeks. New Year’s resolutions are notoriously abandoned within a couple of months, but I still harbor a love for its spirit of reflection and renewal. Back in 2018, I quit my teaching career, found myself a stay-at-home mom, and embarked on a new chapter of slowing down and making memories. 2019 marked the year of becoming a yes person.

2021 and 2022 were both difficult years. Admittedly, last November and December were two of the hardest months I’ve had in recent years. It was the first Thanksgiving and Christmas spent without the kids in 5 years. I remember one day in particular that just about broke me. I led back-to-back homeschool events solo with a brand-new sibling placement. The first event involved hours of travel for an educational field trip with kids who couldn’t remember my name, were unable to focus, and were prone to wander. The second event was only a day or two after the first, and get this, it was a community service event to make Christmas baskets for foster children… that my newly acquired group of foster children attended.

Those two events at the end of 2021 were my absolute rock bottom. It was the coup de grâce of my descent as a yes person. I accepted a placement outside of our agreed-upon limitations at the most inopportune time possible. Instead of “yes” propelling me into new, exciting opportunities, my yes was duty-bound and bottomless. I felt alone standing in front of a group of homeschoolers I barely knew as my party of 6 fell apart at the seams in the back row. But I had to be there because I said I would, even if it was embarrassing and exhausting and bawl-in-the-van-on-the-way-home inducing.

I limped into 2022, but despite dismal beginnings, it wound up being a year of healing. I turned the ship around, and I let go of a lot. I stopped caring so much. I stopped trying to fix everything and bring order to chaos. I let go of the family I used to have. I used to be a mom of 4. The straight, hard truth is I’m not anymore. The Lord has not brought us back together so I needed to accept that and cherish the children in my arms as much as I miss the ones in my heart.

One of my favorite quotes from classical literature reads as follows:

“But there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked event has given the colour to their lifetime; and, still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

There I was, lingering in memories that have given color to my past, waiting around for a recurrence. Waiting and not living is a mistake. I fixed some of my broken in 2022, and now I suppose the next goal is to be the main character of my own story.

I want to burn bright in 2023, not by way of self-importance or achievement of certain accolades. I mean I want to live my life unashamedly. I want to welcome new, exciting opportunities into my life, not by way of saying yes to other people’s ideas and ambitions instead of my own, but by living more boldly in who I am and not balking from pursuits that would give color to my year.

So here we are, 2023. May it be a year of embracing life to the fullest, shrugging off immobilizing insecurities, paring it down to still, quiet moments, and pursuing the things that make us see clearly the person God designed us to be.