January

Borrowed from my good friend, Ashlee: 

‎"One of January’s gifts is its insistence that we consider what fresh thing God might be up to. It nudges us to abandon cynicism and to give ourselves to faith, to the anticipation that God might actually be crafting something we cannot see." Winn Collier

Even the Scroogiest of us seem to somehow find hope in January - the promise of a new year and all that lie in the realm of possibilities.  As much as I despise it, snow even reminds me of this January experience - a blanket of pristine, untarnished white purity lain over the earth to hide her imperfections, if only for a few minutes.  The snow makes everything brighter, as the sun reflects off all that is made white and creates an almost blinding aura of simple, crisp, honest peace.  

All it takes is one dog to spray a big yellow splotch onto that blanket of perfection.  

That's my cynicism for ya.


So what is it with our world, at least in America, obsessing with New Years and making resolutions?  Most of the time, I refuse to make any because I know that I will fail and eventually disappoint myself, which is an awful feeling when you're supposed to be off to a fresh start.  We resolve to work out more, eat less, find more time for friends/fun/family, to break a bad habit, to do something good for others.  And none of these are bad things, right?  And that's just it - as looming as New Years resolutions feel to me, as much as I hate to make them so that I can avoid my own let-down, they are proof of the hope of humanity.  Whether or not you attach God to your experience of a New Year, the resolutions are the hope that we can better ourselves.  They are the smallest sliver of actually believing that "I can be more than what I am."  I can improve me.  I can be more fully me.  I want to be more fully me.  How often do we actually admit that to ourselves?  What a beautiful realization! To make a New Years resolution is to love oneself - to care enough about oneself to say, "I know I can be better.  I'm going to go after it."  How beautiful, honest, and vulnerable.  


Yesterday, on a particularly gorgeous Seattle day, T and I went for a long walk through our neighborhood and down to the Bay.  As we walked along the water, looking out at the absolutely breathtaking snow-covered Olympic mountains (I can say breathtaking when the snow is far away and I don't have to deal with it), we were discussing what we look forward to in 2011.  So much anticipation for the next 365 days!  I will find and start an internship, I will take the trip of a lifetime this summer, I will celebrate my one-year wedding anniversary among other things.  I will maintain and enrich relationships with people I love, I will finish three more terms of graduate school, I will explore more of the incredible state of Washington, I will eat some really good meals, I will cry alone and cry with someone I love, I will laugh alone and laugh with someone I love, I will know God in new ways that will surprise me and I will be disappointed by God.  


When we were walking along the water at the Olympic Sculpture park, we climbed on the giant rocks right on the shore.  I noticed someone scratched "A LOT" into one of the rocks and I took a picture of it with my phone.  I thought it was a lovely and ironic image; scratching a simple phrase of abundance onto the side of a cold, hard, silvery stone.  But to stand atop that small boulder, to look out at Elliott Bay as the sun reflects the water, pulling my eyes toward that vast mountain range while listening to the coos of a toddler nearby and holding the hand of the man I love, I thought it appropriate.  Yes, this is a lot.