Happy New Year... sorta

I realize it's probably much too late to write my New Year's Resolutions. I had good intentions, really. One of my resolutions was to stop procrastinating, so as you can see, that's going well.

My life is about to turn upside down again, I'm going backwards and starting over at the same time. It's new, but it's a familiar new. Almost like a second chance. I was dreading this change, back when I first realized it had to be made. But one of the New Year's resolution I made this year, I fully intend to keep, mostly because if I keep this resolution, the others are sure to follow. That resolution: choose happiness. My life is only as happy as I decide it to be. Changes are not obstacles, they are opportunities. Opportunities for growth, for gain, for wisdom earned and not simply handed out.

So far, I've been good at keeping this resolution. Granted, there are my moments of melancholy, but instead of fighting them, I'm choosing to accept them, realize that they are a part of my life experience, and that they will always pass. I'm choosing to have faith again. Repairing a relationship with God that had withered away to almost nothing, but now is growing. Albeit slowly, but better a steady burn that grows than a brilliant spark that lasts but a moment.

My life is not at all what I would have imagined it to be at this age. At 24, almost 25, I expected to be dating, maybe engaged,having travelled the world on various mission trips/vacations and well on my way to a happy domestic life raising perfectly spotless children in some idyllic suburban mansion with two dogs and a cat. Instead I find myself single, having never left this country in 5 years, moving back home, leaving a job I love, and having to take care of my ailing parents. I could be devastated, I could be crushed. But I'm not. I'm choosing happiness, or something like it. I find myself moving toward opportunities. Though I love my job, it has already taken such an emotional toll on me, that I would be sure to burn out in a few years if I stayed with it. Now I have a chance to explore other areas of my field, perhaps areas that I will find even more suitable for my personality and temperament. I'm moving back home, but I'm going to be close to my loved ones. My home church has been the source of much help in my spiritual life, I'm looking forward to returning to it, to feeling like I belong again. I have to deal with living with my parents again, but I am also privileged because I get care for them, return the love they bestowed upon me freely as a child.

So many opportunities and reasons to be excited. But every once in a while, I feel the hollowness of dreams forsaken, dreams that remain just out of reach, and I am not to pursue them. One of my favorite lines from the movie Peter Pan stays with me:

Mrs. Darling: There are many different kinds of bravery. There's the bravery of thinking of others before one's self. Now, your father... has made many sacrifices for his family, and put away many dreams.

Michael: Where did he put them?

Mrs. Darling: He puts them in a drawer. And sometimes, late at night, we take them out and admire them. But it get's harder and harder to close the drawer. He does. And that is why he is brave.

I hope I can be brave, too.

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