Feeling 22

The ball has dropped. The old acquaintances are forgotten. Or maybe not? I never know what that song is actually saying. Regardless. It is here. 2022. Cue all the memes. It’s a time for new beginnings, new tiktok dances (for real, though, did you see the one with the cute teenager, clumsy dad and surprisingly hip grandma? Oh wait. That’s all of them? Ok.) and good ol’ resolutions.

I love resolutions. They are to me like a bouquet of freshly sharpened pencils are to Meg Ryan. They put my Enneagram One heart to fluttering. For a brief moment in time, we all inherit that fantastic spirit of “But what if this could be better?” Ah! Breathe in the fresh optimism and breathe out the stale pessimism of the acceptance of the mediocre! Welcome to my heaven…and my hell. What. If. This. Could. Be. Better?

This year, I also turn 40. The resolution game takes on a more serious tone. I know 40 is the new 30 or something. I know I have far more life to live. I know I have accomplished quite a bit to be proud of and I know great things are still ahead. Yada yada. But this year hits a little differently.

This year one of my resolutions is to return to my love of writing. To paraphrase something I read, you should write from your scars and not from your gaping flesh wounds. For the last two years I, like just about all of you, have been subjected to some gaping wounds. The last two years have been challenging at their best and devastating at their worst. Grief has abounded. Loss has been prominent. Even the most full-spirited and lively among us are grudgingly admitting “its ok not to be ok” as they hobble along. So I have put myself on the shelf in a lot of ways over the last two years. I couldn’t find a better way to say what was being said and I couldn’t find a way to write around the blood. But…

The scabs are growing in. New skin is forming. And along with those scabs and my impending midlife crisis I’ve discovered I’m a little less timid to speak my thoughts. The people pleaser in me has died a little over the last 24 months. (Don’t worry. She lives enough to keep me smiling politely and following most of the rules.) But I’ve done some work over the last two years. And out of loss and heartbreak and disappointment, I’ve found peace and light and that pesky sidekick to Jesus, grace.

For the next 12 months my goal is to write often. And once a month, to write something here. Something I’ve entered the cage with, wrestled to the ground, bled over and am healing from. I can’t guarantee it will be profound. Most likely it will sound a lot like every other almost 40-something, white girl writing. But with less style and far less wide brimmed hats, because I have very little of that to begin with and hats never fit my head right.

2022 begins with a reckoning in my soul that admits I might not know everything, always be right or even know where to begin in solving the worlds problems. There is a freedom in acknowledging what you do not know yet. There is refreshing air to be breathed in the world of both/and. The amount of certain 100% truths I do know have dwindled down to being counted on one hand. And the rest of the world’s big issues can be summed up with “I don’t know.” I have opinions, in spades! I have ideas, for sure. I have gut feelings, sometimes. But mostly, I just don’t know. Whatever comes out of me over the next 12 months I bet can best be summed up in I don’t know.

Admitting uncertainty doesn’t lead to defeat, it leads to curiosity, which leads to connection, which increases the depth of field.

That’s my big revelation coming in to 2022. I just don’t know. But let me see what I can find out.