A gentle year.

(Image; Waiting, oil on canvas 2006)

It is morning. The sun lights up the drops of dew on the grass. Wookie scratches at the door of my studio to be let in. We have long talks late at night with our dear friends. I’m learning to make a friendly space at the hearth of my soul. My beloved parents are here and we have eaten and sat together, talking and at harmony with one another, over the last days.

This is the new year.

All the time, our hearts are broken in new ways. We step toward God and he moves quickly toward us. We learn to forgive, and forgive again. Our needs go unmet by others.

We will never be able to make life into a neat transaction. Life is not transactional. We are urged to receive in ways that we can never deserve. We are invited to give in ways that can never be repaid. Isn’t this a good life? The ways that we pour back and forth to one another? In the darkest night, a light dawns. This is a new year. A new day.

The kids cycle back and forth through the grass. Slowly, the ones who went to bed earliest wake up. I have chores calling but would prefer to write. I think about the years that have passed. What gifts I have been given. I hold all of them inside of me. What hard nights I have cried through. I hold all of them inside of me.

I am a friend of God, an artist, a mother, a writer, a wife, a friend of people. I have a mental illness and I am a mother. These are both true things. I am a good mother, and I am at the mercy of my illness at times when it shakes me in its teeth, leaving me curled on the floor. This will never not be true about me. I look for balance between offering ease to myself and pushing toward the hardest things. Retreating and emerging.

I water the good things in my soul- these ones get buckets of water. I find new paths of thought, healthy, friendly ones. And I accept me for who I really am, rather than the ideal that lives in my head. I sit with Jesus at my hearth and we talk about all the hard and beautiful things.

I will insist again, this year, on gentleness. In writing, in life, in fierce desire for justice. Gentleness is love that covers and offers a place of rest, at the end of the day. Isn’t this a good life? Isn’t this a good day? We could bake bread, or maybe do some hard work. We could wash the dishes, if we can tear ourselves away from our writing. We could sit in the sun or the shade.

You can find rest and a gentle space for you. For your heart. Life is not transactional. Sometimes you will offer more than you receive. Sometimes the love pouring toward you will be more than you can even take in. It is a good and heartbreaking life. Both of these things are true.

This is a new year, or even just a day. A day is enough to figure out, Jesus said. And this day is for you.