Renewed Hope

It’s amazing what a 40 degree day at the end December can do for your soul.

Often as we enter the early nights of the winter months, the light fading in the afternoon instead of night, the cold limiting our time with nature even further, we find ourselves in a place of darkness, physically, mentally and emotionally.

Many of us found the promise of 2024 insatiable only to have it bring a sadness or disappointment we had longed would dissipate or disappear within the 12 months of that calendar. Now it is the end of those days and we didn’t get all of our hopes desires, our wishes or our prayers answered- at least not the ones we thought we needed and yearned for the most.

I guess we don’t get to choose everything, like which of our prayers are brought to fruition.

The fixer in me wants to remedy my personal struggles… after all, I’ve helped fix them for others, I’ve held hands, given recommendations, prayed for others and had those prayers answered and yet my own seem to have fallen on deaf ears. Have I not done enough to earn my own blessings? Have I done something so heinous in my life that this is a penance I must pay? If I have, please let it be known so that I may have the chance to find some resolve and justify this all. Have you felt that way too?

The dim makes it easy to crawl into yourself, find the deepest corners and with your back now against a wall, it feels like a safe space to look on from, it feels like nothing can come up behind you to strike. You guard yourself and seal yourself away. These trials can make you question your existence and your purpose. Like if you aren’t good enough for what is so basic and easy for what feels like everyone else, what is so wrong with you that you can’t have it to…

For me, it makes me work harder in every other aspect that I can control, loosing myself for a moment in whatever work I am doing so that my mind, even if just for a while, isn’t on my shortcomings.

I find it funny when people tell me I look like I am good at everything when in reality, my exceptionalism is often a mascaraed for the fact that I feel so truly a failure in some aspects of my life. I think in a way, a lot of people feel this or some variation thereof.

We hide behind our successes.

But the sun today- the last day of a year that while carrying fond memories, still carried heavy burdens and sadness, the sun made me feel a small resurrection of my soul. It reminded me that even when there is darkness, a light will return. When there is cold, it makes the embrace of warmth more comforting. It reminds me that I am so loved, I am enough and that even though I feel like I am missing a part of myself, I am whole and that gives me hope.

It reminds me of what I do have and for a moment takes my mind off of what I hope to have. My wonderful husband, my home, my family, my pups and my few close friends.

This year is almost to an end and a new one will begin before my eyes open in the morning and with that promise brings a hope.

A hope for a family, a hope for things bigger than myself, a hope for a future I’m thankful to have the opportunity to hope for.

I hope you had the chance to go outside and shine your face in the December sun.

I hope you know that you are worthy, I hope you never give up hoping for what your heart so truly needs.

And I hope your 2025 brings what you’ve been waiting for.