Looking Back, Thinking Forward

Here we are just a few weeks away from the close of 2010. It's natural to want to assess how things went, or didn't go, as the case may be. Everywhere we look, there will be "The Year in Review" articles, magazine issues, newscasts. It can't be avoided. So I'm not going to try to, but instead, just succumb. Surrender. Not a bad thing for the mentally exhausted person I seem to be at the moment.

I have to frame this in as simple terms as possible: Writer Tom Bodett (yes, the Motel 6 guy who said a few years back they'll "leave the light on for ya") has said we really only need 3 things in this life to be happy. Aren't you relieved? They are: (1) something to do; (2) something to believe in; and (3) someone to love.

I've had PLENTY to do this year--teaching, learning to kayak, drumming in the CMC Jazz Project and at my church's youth band, textbook and novel writing, a Bible study late this year, and work on the Habitat for Humanity Board of directors here in Chaffee County. Sleep, and precious little of it, came in there somewhere. Near the end of this year, it has become starkly apparent that for my sanity and health, I'd better cut some things out of the schedule. So out goes Habitat, earlier than I should be doing it, but come January, I'll be divested of that huge--and very worthwhile--time commitment. I'll miss working with those fine folks on a regular basis, but I do hope to see them some next summer. But the other items? Most of them stay--the writing, the kayaking, the teaching (I have to eat, and buy more drums), the music commitments. So looks like I'll still have number 1 covered. Maybe a little too covered yet again. But I'm learning as I go on this "No" thing. I never thought I'd have to say that.

Of course I have number 2 covered, as well: something to believe in--namely, God, His son, Jesus, and the ministry and guidance of the Holy Spirit in my life. I truly do not know how others get along in the world without God, a knowledge--limited though it is and always will be--that surpasses anything else I could ever wrap my brain around. Or my heart. God's providence, even when it looks different than what I'd like, still fills me mostly with gratitude: I have my health, great friends, great family (though 1,000 miles away), and assurance that He loves me and cares for my every need, knows my every desire, and wants only the best for me. Every time I see those whom I know don't know God in a personal relationship, I wonder how they weather the storms, wade through the grief life hands us all. It's lonely without Him.

And speaking of "lonely," now we come to number 3: "Somebody to love." (I hear that old Queen song in my head right now. Do you?) I love my family. I love my friends. I even love my church family, most of the time. But I know what Bodett meant when he uttered this phrase on the Trinity of happiness: someone to share the deepest, innermost pieces of the heart. Someone to discover life with. Someone to discover. Someone who can discover you. A relationship so special and private that it cannot ever be adequately expressed in mere words. An almost holy thing between two people that God ordains. Tough one, that. As I've been struggling this year with a certain male-female puzzle, it has occurred to me that we're put on this planet to partially heal each others' wounds while we wait for God to continue that work and ultimately perfect it. That's even more tough because often the wounding and the healing are happening simultaneously. Or one violently after the other. It doesn't even matter in what order. The pain is unmistakable either way.

And yet, I still covet number 3, pain and all. It gives a sense of purpose to number 1, above, and it gives a stage to work out the lessons of number 2, above. I don't think Bodett had any hierarchy of need in mind when he coined this list; if he did, he'd have probably put number 2 first. But I find that third item the most needful of all--not just to satisfy some sensual part of me (though that's a benefit I can't deny), but to give me an environment to become more fully what God had in mind for me all along: a fully-functioning woman, alive to the core, helping heal others even as I am being healed.

That's my prayer, my resolution, for 2011. Amen.