open

There’s something that happens as the calendar nears that final day of one year, and I anticipate cracking open a new calendar to welcome the fear, uncertainty, promise, and mundanity that are offered up in invisible ink on 365 new squares.

I feel rushed.

Rushed to squeeze in those last items I swore I would do by Thanksgiving.  Then by Christmas.  Then by the end of the year.  And somehow New Years is upon me.

Rushed to send emails, wrap up work, unpack from vacation while offering half-tuned-in mumbles to Little Friend who is patiently sitting at my elbow with a miniature tea set, a collection of bouncy balls who are standing in as mermaids in her mermaid kingdom, and I have somehow been dubbed a littering octopus who is reportedly flinging trash far and wide in her ocean abode.  Somehow this all makes sense to her.  I send another email and absentmindedly toss some trash in her aquatic tea party direction.

Rushed to succeed at something in the final hours of a year.

And then I question…why?

Why do I think if I complete these things today, on the eve of the eve of the new year, I will somehow guarantee a success that seems less ensured come January 1?

If I’m honest with myself and declare it openly in this public space, I should confess that I’m motivated by fear.  Fear of my own failure.  Fear of God’s potential answer of “No” in my life.  Fear of the bent turn that those blank days ahead could take.  So here I sit, like some worrisome wintering groundhog, attempting to stockpile my necessities for the days to come.

I’d much rather approach the blankness of the new year with open hands, ready to receive the good and the bad, the expected and unexpected, the dreams achieved and dreams deferred.

I think (cross my fingers, toes, shoelaces, and sweatpants ties with hope) that I can switch around my focus.  Out with the fear, in with embracing God’s glory.  Because if I truly believe down the the red, pulsing marrow of my bones that all things (the good, bad, and blank calendar days ahead) work out in the end not in “Happy” or “Sad” but in “Come-What-May-Glory”, well, that just kind of takes all the sting and victory out of the bad things I fear, doesn’t it?

If I can release my tension over fussing around to guarantee success in these final two days of 2011, I won’t be quite as uptight at the start of 2012.  After all, there are more important parts to life than the “what ifs.”

I’d rather focus on my make-believe octopus duties than my own make-believe fears.

‘Cause who wouldn’t rather be a litter-pus than a worry-bug any day?

This post is gratefully inspired by and shared with The Gypsy Mama’s Five Minute Fridays.