A Purposeful & Prayerful Pause
As we embark on a new year and messages of “New year, New me” circle all around, I am carefully considering what this new year means to me personally. Perhaps the greatest gift of a new year is that it gives us a place to pause.
The end of the year can often feel like a sprint. With holidays, end-of-year deadlines, appointments before insurance deductibles start again, and taking time off, we blaze hard and fast right up until New Year’s Eve. Let’s face it, sometimes the entire year can feel like one big race!
But the start of a new year feels shiny and new. Like there are possibilities. But before we dart off making our plans and dreaming our dreams, a new year allows us to stop for a minute and really reflect. It provides space to pump the brakes and sit in consideration. If we truly allow ourselves this time for contemplation, our thoughts, plans, ideas, and dreams for the new year can be a deeper reflection of the lives we want to live.
This rare life can often take, take, take, and when it does, it can leave us with little time for reflection. But it’s in this reflection that we gain perspective. This reflection gives us time to make sense of it all and find our way forward. We gain insight by taking time to sift through the last year and pull out the pieces for examination. Here in this pause, we can act as detectives, researchers, and archaeologists extracting specimens from our lives.
Exhibit A: That time I lost my head and bit off the one of the person next to me.
Exhibit B: That time I radiated gratitude.
Slide 136: The words that came out of my mouth when I was asked a hard question.
Sample 231: My soul when it received love.
Like any good detective/researcher/archaeologist, I can observe, inspect, and question as I pull out each sample for consideration. What worked? What didn’t? Am I moving towards things that matter to me? Did where I put my time and energy this last year reflect the things that I value? Did I uphold the qualities I hold dear in the moments that matter? Who am I becoming? Who do I want to become? What do I stand for? Who do I stand for?
Sometimes this pause is an opportunity to get back to asking the most meaningful questions. What is it that I want from this life? What is important to me? What are my beliefs? What do I want to teach my children? What do I want to pass on?
There is value in these pauses. There is much to gain from asking these profound questions. It’s here that we can find ourselves again. I can’t see myself when I’m running too fast. I can’t hear God’s voice when I’m talking too much. I can’t keep a clear perspective when I’m overwhelmed. Sitting in the stillness allows me to regroup. It allows me to pull out all the pieces, examine them thoughtfully, then decide how to put them back together. It offers me the opportunity to determine which pieces I will fit back in, which ones I will leave out, and those I am missing and need to grow and gain. This process is worth every minute it takes.
Before I go forward, I must know what I’m moving towards. Before I commit to this or that, I must consider whether those things manifest the life I want to be living. So I must spend time asking the questions because the answers provide guidance and direction that help me know where to steer my ship in 2023. And I must know the answers before I set sail.
Now don’t get me wrong, 2023 is coming in full force. She’s already thrown a zillion things my way in the form of my son’s doctor’s appointments and procedures, along with commitments, obligations, invitations, events, and to-dos. It’s only mid-January, and I already feel the pushing of our hustle-and-grind culture. She’s knocking at my door. Are you ready? We’re waiting. Hurry up!
But I won’t be rushed. This is important work that deserves my pause. I believe, if I want this new year to bear fruit, my purposeful and prayerful pause is the seed planting with the best soil and water that can be used.
So to 2023, I say, “I’ll be there in a minute.”
I’m pressing pause before I press play.
