Month: December 2024

Selah … rest and reflect

I learned the word Selah this morning while reading. It was in the context of God’s invitation to stop, be still, breathe deeply, pause doing and practise being, with him preferably. Although there is no greater invitation, it remains easy to rush into doing without the pausing that can so powerfully change the trajectory of the day.

Anyway, during the weird and wonderful window between Christmas and New Year, I have practised pausing, in between excessively enjoying myself. One of my reflections has been about the double-sided reality of everything, including us, life, the year we are about to end and the one we’re about to begin.

2024 like every year before and however many more we are granted, has its own unique challenges and gifts. While we all prefer the gifts, it is usually the challenges that offer the greater opportunity for learning and growth, when we choose to accept them.

I often hear myself telling people, ‘It’s not what happens to us but the way we respond that matters.’  I love this. At least I do until a personalised shit bomb explodes in my face bringing my own words back to taunt me! One must at least try to practice what one preaches!

An area I’ve started to work on and will continue to prioritise in 2025, is enlarging my shit coping capacity! God, please note this is not a request for more tests! At least not until I’ve fully recovered from the last one, please!

Now on the brink of 2025, when I look back, I am filled with gratitude. There were large portions of 2024 where I was drowning in ingratitude. The upgrade in attitude was a slow, painful one. So, when I saw something on Facebook asking for a word to describe 2024, I chose ‘mixed’. This is because it was the special gift of friends who loved me through the worst of times, that bought balance to my experience. However, the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to change my word to ‘educational’.

For 2024 is the year that I have realised in a more embodied way than ever before, that every day really is a school day. The older I get, the more I realise that I really know very little about very little. And that is ok. Especially as I have an even bigger appetite for learning, than I do for cake (honest, although Christmas may be an exception due to a friend’s home-made Christmas cake, nom, nom, nom).

What really excites me is realising afresh that God is the ultimate teacher who knows mine and everyone else’s preferred style of learning. He knows whether our brains are wired in a neurotypical or neurodiverse way, as well as our preference for visual, experiential or whatever other fancy arse learning styles whose names I can’t remember. In my case, it’s the serial making of messes and mistakes style of learning. God teaches us however we learn best because he wants us to learn and grow … this is what living things do.

I’ve finally realised that when this student is ready, I see the teacher is all around me, always has been and always will be. And I realise that I have been a very inconsistent student because I’m usually so busy trying to do everything I love that I miss what is right in front of me.

How grateful I am that God is a patient teacher who shows me the same lesson as many times as I need to see it. At least I am when I start to get it. I’m not such a great student when amid a shit show so intense I can’t see beyond it. And that’s where those amazing people otherwise known as friends come in to save the day and spare me from totally losing the plot. I see all those precious people who sit with me in my suffering when I struggle to sit with myself, as gifts from God Almighty. You can’t buy that. (but you can pray in the ability to give and to receive it).

There really is learning in all parts of life. I have come to recognise that the challenges I resist and resent the most, usually offer the most enriching, expanding, enhancing lessons, when I surrender to learning them! These challenges contain the ‘gift of growth’ that is concealed within a challenge that we often wish to bypass or return to sender.

In 2024, I have been fortunate to witness a close friend receive a gift from God in the form of a beautiful baby. How wonderful to feel and savour that unique new human smell! And to be reminded through their wide-eyed wonder of the magic of life despite the sorrow.

At the other end of life, I have sat with a friend whose body is dying thanks to the ravages of the life stealing shitbag, that is cancer. This reality magnifies the truth that the most important part of life is and always will be, loving people with our presence.

There is nothing more important than being with each other, at the start, the end and all the highs and lows in between birth and death. That’s it right there … the overriding lesson of 2024 and every other year … to love and be loved; in joy and sorrow, life and death.

And so, as we prepare to cross from 2024 into a brand spanking new year, maybe we could commit to carrying this spirit of Christmas, aka the spirit of love, right through to Christmas 2025 and beyond.

I know I’ll need a lot of help from on high to practice this! But I also know that when it comes from a sincere heart, it’s the type of prayer that God is all over!

Happy New Year all.

The cultivation of calm

The experience of calm is often longed for but largely incompatible with our fast-paced culture. However, an inner sensation of calm does not have to depend on external conditions. They do help of course just as certain conditions hinder the sensation of calm.  

This period before Christmas can be excessively busy, social and stressful resulting in much rushing around. This can feel chaotic and exhausting but not necessarily calm. And therefore, the ability to cultivate calm amidst this season, is even more precious.

Yesterday when faced with the task of shopping, that can so easily overwhelm me, I chose to spend a little extra time asking, ‘the man who can’, to give me a lot of extra help with this calm maintaining malarkey. I knew that with 2 lists of items to buy from six different places, I could quickly descend into raging and snarling mode. I knew that I would struggle with all the stress inducing scenarios that shopping is filled with; crowds, noise, queues and self-service machines that don’t recognise items from their own shops. And therefore, I would need some help from on high to maintain my calm without losing my cool or anything else.

And so it was, after admitting my need for help and asking for a large portion of it, I headed off to the shops keen to see how the experience would unfold. Generally, I have about a two-hour limit for shopping, but I parked that knowledge along with the car and practised calmly focusing on making my way through the shops/lists. I was especially delighted that upon arriving in shop number one, I could still find the lists that I meticulously prepared before leaving the house. Whenever I get to a shop only to discover that my list has disappeared from the depths of my bag, I experience an instant switch into snarling beast mode. That’s not fun for anyone.

Anyway, I am delighted to share that I got round all six places which provided most of what was on my lists. A momentary thought as to whether I could manage a seventh place was quickly dismissed. I could not. I had reached my limit and wished to quit while still on the right side of it. This is progress.

As I drove home, I reflected that I had managed to do all that within less than two and half hours. Not with my usual approach of rushing around like a lunatic causing myself and anyone around me entirely avoidable stress, but by doing this whole calm thing. I even caught myself smiling at people and engaging in conversation. While I didn’t want to prolong the whole experience, I did quite like it! Which is good to remember ahead of doing what may be one of several ‘last’ trips to the shops today.

This cultivation of calm is a revelation! And a very welcome one! Especially while in a season where emotions can become heightened, stress can arise unexpectedly or in line with fast-growing but never-ending to-do-lists and moods can drop as fast as sugar laden treats are inhaled. The ability to find calm, amidst this Christmas season, is a super special gift for the season. For everyone.