Last year my new year offered the chance to commit to a new way to face the day - by not hoping the day avoided bad news, inconvenience, grief or loss - but to know the day included my being able to navigate and embrace what was my life. It felt a bit like life with new wings. Wings with tears, slashes even, wings that don’t feel my size, but wings that are just mine to fly with for now. And that I will do so with a blessed assurance of a Spirit of the Living God to be with me. So I was not in despair waiting for the circumstantial hell to come to conclusion but moreover asking, how now can I wade into what is before me?

It has been done imperfectly. i have absolutely tanked some days. I have fantasized of comfort and a different life. i idolized prior joy in a way that did not offer gratitude but bitterness. i have wanted to shrink myself and my wings and ask for a different journey because i was not so sure perseverance was mine.

In the middle of the church service the other night, I saw the image of Mary and Joseph looking over the tiny baby Jesus in his crib. The picture was tiny, almost like a footer on the slideshow for the Christmas carols but it really drew me in to their story. The way they were postured in their gaze struck me. The simplicity of the scene struck me in a way it has not done before. The idea of their bringing, by all unlikely circumstances, the Son of God to life in a chaotic, messy barn got me. And these tiny shapes on the screen paved the way for me again. It is so far from life being about order and comfort. It is about life willing to gaze back at Jesus and say, how now and what now?

It is almost a new calendar year. how now and what now? can i this year continue to be reminded of my seemingly (compared to mary and joseph) tiny and particular offering to the world around me? And will i offer it barring all the discomfort and inconvenience that it may cost me? Even writing that, let me tell you, makes me want to press delete for a bit. I am uncomfortable more often now and unsure more frequently. I am feeling like throwing in the hat in quite a few areas. And maybe in some of those, the path will illuminate to follow a new way, but the courage I feel I need to commit back to these wings and ask where they shall soar this year, I am both eager and afraid.

These words strike me today as I close out Christmas night on a plane ride from East to West Coast. They can be the launch to this year's openess to new courage of asking, how and what now?

“TIL HE APPEARED, AND THE SOUL FELT IT’S WORTH. THE THRILL OF HOPE, THE WEARY WORLD REJOICES.” O HOLY NIGHT

Indeed, with this wild belief in Jesus, my soul does find its worth and purpose. it is absolutely thrilling to consider then the hope of what is before me as I attempt to live into what He has for me to participate in this year. And yes, i come weary but rejoicing that I have a lead I can trust to be faithful and near.