I’m struggling today.
I had a post started, sharing thoughts about something I’d read this morning, but it fell flat. I need to ponder it more, work with it more, figure out how it fits into my life and thoughts and intentions…and actions.
And, to be honest, there’s a bit of melancholy resting on me today. January 1 is just a day on a calendar. We have to rotate it through sometime. Why not today? Throughout history, cultures have always chosen a day to do celebrate the start of a new year. Of a new rotation of opportunity and experience and existence. And celebration is so important. God Himself ordained times of celebration, including a new year celebration, as He set up the structure for the nation of Israel. Celebration is good and helpful.
Yet sometimes it really does just fall flat. Sometimes it really does just feel like it’s an arbitrary day on the calendar, especially after the hard years we’ve walked through lately, one after another.
Sometimes the desire to celebrate is there. But the means to do so? Those aren’t as readily available.
So, we struggle.
I’ll be honest, I don’t want to struggle through 2025. I know there will be ups and downs. There will be sweet times and very hard times. I know this, not because I’m expecting a repeat of the last six years (remember how many people were so ready to be done with 2019 and were fully convinced that 2020 would be better?) but because we live in the real world. There will be births and deaths, joys and heartaches, beginnings and endings.
For the past six years, though, the hard has weighed me down heavily. The negative has made it a challenge to truly celebrate the positive.
So, for this year, I want to learn to celebrate purely. Not to ignore the reality of the negative. Not to shove down the weeping and mourning that will inevitably come. Not to deny the fact that life can be so very hard sometimes. But to decide that I won’t allow those things to keep me from celebrating the good. Because there is good. There’s been good every single year. If I’ve missed it, it’s because I’ve been so focused on the bad. That’s the easy route, to be honest. I want to accept the more challenging route. I want to be able to walk in the bad while still being constantly ready to celebrate the good — even in those instances when the two are walking hand in hand.
I’m struggling today, and I know I’ll struggle many more times in 2025. But I’m also determined to relearn how to celebrate. I’m determined to make that more of my focus than the struggle. Because this life of following Christ and seeing His work in the world around me is worth celebrating.
Not Quite Ordinary 