Saturday night midnight, as the ball dropped in Times Square my personal Year of Jubilee concluded. I felt a little sad but mostly just grateful. It has been absolutely the best year of my life. But before I get into why it was such a fabulous year I feel that I should in the interest of full disclosure go over some things that didn’t work out as well as I had hoped.
· I didn’t keep up my blog. I regret that but not doing anything because I “had to” for an entire year was delicious!
· I fell off the Jubilee wagon. From time to time I would slip back into the old expectations trap – I expect you to do, say or be a certain way…I feel pressured to do, say or be a certain way. Nothing good came of those relapses. They were sad, unhappy blots in an otherwise wonderful year.
· I packed on 15 lbs!! Yeah I know, wow! That’s what my doctor said. Now I think I know why God ordained a Jubilee every fifty years. That’s basically once in a lifetime. I guess if you live to be a 100 you definitely deserve a second Jubilee!
Now to the wonderful gifts that filled my life to overflowing during a personal Year of Jubilee:
1. My spiritual life was flooded with joy, real palpable day to day joy. The Jubilee refreshed my faith. I experienced Jesus’ grace and glory in a beautiful unfolding over the course of this year. His creation stunned me. There were moments when I literally felt as if I was experiencing heaven. I walked with God in moments. Not always, not every minute but just below the surface there was that great pulsating beauty of his creation and creatures. I went to church when I felt like it. I visited other religions and experienced their gifts of worship with no regard to dogma. The experience was beautiful and enlightening. I found that as children of God we are both diverse and so much the same. Sometimes it made me laugh. God is so good! No expectations of God, church or religion sounds like heresy but it was my epiphany. Glory, glory, glory!
2. My romantic relationship with my husband grew even more tender and loving. Trading expectations for gratitude turns mundane chores into acts of kindness. It may be a subtle distinction but the reward is so sweet – expect nothing of your partner and you will be lavished with daily acts of kindness.
3. Together my daughters and I built a new adult relationship based on no expectations. As parents we have so many expectations of our children that run the gamut from a sublime desire for their eternal joy and happiness to a ridiculous preoccupation with their personal habits and choices. This year my daughters opened their lives to me in new ways and called me out when I slipped back into old expectations. Occasionally I had to stick to my boundaries too and refuse to accept their expectations. It was sometimes rocky but never for very long. Joy kept bubbling up. The great releasing of debt and divesting of debt is incredibly invigorating in a relationship. My daughters have encouraged (I might say insisted) that I continue the Year of Jubilee indefinitely.
4. A challenging work environment turned into a fabulously rewarding work environment. Who would have guessed laying down expectations and refusing to accept expectations would work at work?? It not only worked it worked really, really well. I love work, we all love work – especially when we are doing what we are called to do. It gives our life meaning, purpose and satisfaction. Nobody really wants to be without work. It’s the grind we can do without. I gave up on the grind this year. It wasn’t working for me anyways. It was frankly sucking the life blood out of me. I put a little beaded dancing figurine from Africa on my desk to remind myself that work was just work; this was my year of celebration. Why did it make such a difference? There are probably psychologist that could explain it. I’m not sure that I can. Perhaps it was wasting less energy on what others were or weren’t doing and focusing on what I wanted to accomplish. Maybe it was worrying less about what the boss would think and just focusing on making things happen. I really don’t know but the most unexpected result of my Year of Jubilee is that I love my job!
So now that the Year of Jubilee is over what’s next? Almost all my friends and family have encouraged me to continue my Jubilee indefinitely. But a year is a year and I don’t plan on extending it. One friend asked me if was going to default back to dysfunctional. (Smart ass!) I agree that doesn’t sound like much fun.
I view my personal Year of Jubilee as a much needed course correction. Too much baggage collected over the course of 55 years that I needed to let go of. I had been trying to live up to too many expectations that were no longer helpful (if they ever were) and clinging to too many childish expectations of others. It was time to enjoy what was instead of focusing on what should be. I don’t plan on visiting the lost and found in search of all that abandoned baggage any time soon. Good riddance!
I do plan on focusing more on my health more this year. (I bet you didn’t see that coming!) The wonderful thing about God is his infinite perfection. The God of Jubilee is the God of Fasting and Prayer. The God of the Sabbath is the God of Tithing. The God of Grace is the God of Justice. After my Year of Jubilee I feel ready to happily engage in a course of spiritual discipline. I’m not sure exactly what that will look like yet. There are so many experiences in this life worth having.
This has been the best year of my life. In mid October I was driving in the Ozark Mountains returning from the mines that my company operates. As I navigated the steep, winding country road I was contemplating an upcoming trip and mentally going through a list of silly things like parents do – were all our affairs in order, would our kids be OK if the unthinkable happened, were there any loose ends that should be tidied up before we left? Suddenly the valley appeared in front of me bathed in the setting sun. The autumn leaves blazed, the fields were rippling with golden grass, the sky was ablaze with glory. It was so beautiful I could hardly take it all in. I felt like I was driving through a slice of heaven. I breathed thank you, thank you, thank you! If this is all there is to life, just this, this here and now, no heaven, no afterlife it would be enough I told God. And suddenly I realized that it was so. It was sufficient! His grace was sufficient. My life was filled with joy. He had taken my hand and opened my eyes. I was walking with Him towards eternity. I don’t expect my life to free of pain and misery and disappointment but I know where heaven is. It is enough.
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