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.