Onward

“[I]f this life of ours
Be a good glad thing, why should we make us merry
Because a year of it is gone? but Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come, 
Whispering 'it will be happier'...” 
― Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I'll just come out and say it. On the sliding scale of my favorite holidays, New Year is at the bottom. It's just always made me kind of sad; even when I was little, New Year's was a total downer. Sure it was fun getting to stay up way past my bedtime and drink the sparkling grape juice and eat all the finger foods that Mom had prepared for us, but all in all, it was always anticlimactic and somewhat terrifying. I get it. The promise of a new year is exhilarating. It really is. I just very rarely saw it that way. To me, the prospect of a new year and all the unknowns was unsettling. As a reminder, I am the  child who used to have a panic attack when I really sat down and thought about the infinite nature of space. I am the child who used to think, "What if what I'm experiencing right now isn't really my life but a flashback of my life as I lay dying?" IN THE SECOND GRADE, PEOPLE. Something went wrong with the wiring in my tiny little head, and I've been afraid of everything always forever and ever. I'll admit it. I was a tiny Tennyson. My thought was, "Why should we celebrate the fact that a year of our life is gone, and we're that much closer to dying?" (I'm a regular Wednesday Addams. I mean, seriously. A deep, morbid child.) And, at the risk of sounding horribly negative (or am I already past that point?), there is a part of adult me that retains some of that Wednesday Addams mentality. When I was celebrating New Year's last year, I was ringing in a year in which I'd 1.) have a terrible, devastating miscarriage, 2.) only to have my sister move literally across the world a month later, and 3.) see my grandfather die another three months later. Now get me a noisemaker and a shiny hat!!!

But I can't think like that because it's not okay. Not really. It's not okay to be so afraid and anxious and nervous about what's to come that you only focus on those things and not on the thousand other things around you that are good and perfect and from above. As much as 2014 sucked (and it sucked hard), there were some lovely parts. I worked and I worked and I worked and then I worked some more on my National Boards, and by the help and grace of God Himself, I got that sucker. I got to spend spring break with my sister in Florida, and we took Lucy to the zoo and the beach and a million other fun things. I got to be pregnant, even if it was just for a little while. I got to spend more time with my sister than I've spent in many a moon in the month before she moved to Italy. We found an awesome church. And I bought a really killer pair of boots last week. There is good, and there is bad, and that is life. 

So *drumroll* I'm kind of excited about 2015. I am. Truly. I'm ready to let go of 2014. 

As much as I want to punch 2014 in the face, I would be remiss if I weren't grateful for all that was contained therein, the good and the bad. Zora Neale Hurston wrote, "There are years that ask questions and years that answer." 2014 asked me questions, oh so many questions, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Years of Questions bring gifts of their own; perhaps not the gifts we've come to expect from life, but gifts nonetheless. 

2009 was a terrible year. A year of many questions, if you will, but it taught me SO much. I was 23. I was living in Charlotte and working at CaroMont, pulling double duty in the Purchasing department as the secretary AND an assistant buyer. I was in my second year of the graduate program in teaching at UNCC. I was working full-time and going to school full-time. I'd fly down 85 to Gastonia in the morning, work through lunch so that I could leave an hour early for my class, fly up 85 to UNCC for my hours-long night classes, then walk through the door of my apartment and collapse. I was exhausted. I just wanted to be done with school and done with my job and to begin my teaching career instead of spinning my wheels at a desk job in an office with no windows where I ordered body bags all day. (No joke.) I'd always make small talk at work with the medical and pharmaceutical reps when they came in, and I distinctly remember talking to one of my favorites about how done I was with January that year and how ready I was for spring. I was always doing that: rushing things, rushing life (as many of us are wont to do). A few days later, I got a call from my parents early in the morning as I was getting ready to rush, rushintoworkthroughlunchtoclassbackhometosleep. My grandmother was dying. There was nothing they could do. I needed to come say goodbye. No, no, no. I take it back. I don't want time to go by quickly. I want it to be January again. Please, please, please. I'm sorry. I held her hand until she died at 7:00 that night, February 2nd. It wasn't January anymore. I got the wish I no longer wanted. 

I remember thinking how awful it was that I'd wished her life away. I wasted it. She was alive for four precious weeks of that year, and I'd wasted them. I just wished they were gone. I don't do that anymore. Not really. In frustration I may say that I cannot wait for Christmas/spring/summer break, but I always have the thought in the back of my head that says, "Stop wishing away your life." 2009 taught me a lot: the hideous beauty that exists in the deepest throes of grief, the art of gaining and losing friends, and, most importantly, the value of a day, even a rotten, crummy, horrible day. 

2014 taught me about grace: what it is, where it comes from, the importance of showing it. There is a quote that I love that is attributed to Buddha (not my god, but hey, I can still learn from him): "In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you." how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you...not meant for you. It still just blows me away, the truth in that. It has been indescribably hard to let go of the baby we so desperately wanted. The loss of our baby has overshadowed everything for me this year I think about it at least once a day. At least. I can't stop thinking about it as my due date rapidly approaches on January 6th, but I have to let it go. It wasn't meant for me. It's hard, it is SO hard when all I see on Facebook is pregnancy announcement after pregnancy announcement, ultrasound pictures, belly shots, and status updates on every flipping craving some people have, and it takes everything in me to scroll gracefully down the page without wincing or cursing or crying. I'll admit that sometimes I have my moments. Sometimes when I see your pregnancy announcements, I cry. I cry hard. A good, cathartic, ugly cry even. Sometimes I'm so jealous of you that I want to crawl out of my skin. But sometimes I don't even bat an eye. Because I'm learning to gracefully let go of that which was not meant for me. I can't hate 2014 for teaching me that as much as I might want to. 

So yes. I'm ready to move forward with grace. I want to stuff every corner of my yard with plants and flowers. I want to feather my nest. I want to make things with my hands. I want to do unto others. I want to be Love in Action. I want to find joy in every blessed thing my daughter does. I want to start dancing again. Heck, I may even start running again! 2015 seems like a good year for all those things. By the help and grace of God, we have been given another year. Who am I to be ungrateful? 

I didn't want to sit around the house today thinking about how I was supposed to have a baby and all next week (because that's pretty much what I've been doing for the past few weeks), so I went outside, and I worked and I got dirty and I fixed things and I made things look pretty. Then I went over to my parents' and I dug up my grandmother's peony bushes, the ones that I've been saying I'm going to transplant for a year. I transplanted a lot of her plants to our old house in Shelby, but I had to leave them there when we moved, so having something of hers in my yard is emotional. As I carefully dug up the tubers, I thought about her planting them with her own hands so many years ago. I thought about the things in life that last and the things in life that don't, what matters, what doesn't, and a downy grey feather came floating past my face at that moment and landed gently on a branch of the butterfly bush next to me. I'm not sure what it meant, but I'm taking it as a good sign because, whether a year of questions or answers, 2015 is sure to bring its own gifts.