Today is the first day of a New Year, and though it's not something that has meaning in the sense of the reality of time, it feels like a new page is turning whenever the year ends and begins anew according to the calendars we keep. My Grandmother used to call us at midnight every year and she'd always have something positive to say, asking us how we planned to spend the year and saying that whatever we were doing at midnight mattered because she believed that's how we'd be spending the rest of the year. I've had times in my life when I tried to plan my New Year's Eve midnights up to the moment, but I don't do that any more. These days, in these years since I was born again, I pray and ask God for guidance, putting in the word that sometimes there are things I'd like to be doing, but also knowing that whatever it is will be the best and most beautiful thing as long as I am open to whatever it is that God has planned for me.
I've been talking to people a lot lately about living our lives in that way, and how it is the human thing to want to have some control, and sometimes complete control, of the outcome and how we live our lives, what we do, where we go, the choices we make, who we love, who we leave, where we live, where we go, the work we do, the places we travel, the way we spend our time and our days and our years. The truth of it is that we always have free choice because that's how God designed it, but what I've learned over the years is that God always has the best for us, and when we can tune into that frequency and keep our ears and hearts open, we can begin to walk in new ways and overcome the very human desire to do things the way we want to do them when there might just be another way that is better.
It's not easy to change our minds to think of new ways of thinking and living and doing things, but one thing that I know is that we've always got a helper with us in the Spirit, one who lives with us and walks with us and keeps us on track if we can only keep asking and keep open to seeing and living and walking in new ways.
The other day when I was talking to someone about YES Gallery and how there are things that I've been experiencing there that are all about bringing back my own creative life in a very powerful way, I added that other people are experiencing that too in that beautiful blessing of a space, and that there is something that I've been feeling very strongly about saying yes to things that I might not in a practical adult way understand how they will happen. When we were children there were often very practical reasons why adults would say no to us, but sometimes it was simply their own not understanding how it might be possible, or not being willing to take a risk because of their own fear or doubt.
I remembered after that conversation that one year when I was very small, maybe three years old, I was at a store called Bradlees with my mother, and I was asking if we could buy Easter dresses for me and my older sister. Bradlees was a very inexpensive store, but we didn't have much money then to spend on extras, and she said no, and I took out my own money that I'd made selling potholders door to door in our neighborhood, and I showed her that I had enough because the dresses weren't that much. At times like this when I remember things like that I begin to understand that YES Gallery can be a place where, within some definite practicality, yes can be said and that it needs to be said even as we weigh and measure and plan with reason.
In this New Year, I'm planning to bring that yes forward, and as I pray and lean on the guidance of God to know that if I'm feeling like I need to say yes, regardless of my own not understanding how things can happen, I need to say yes and that saying yes will continue to open the doors to the next moment, because built into that yes is faith and hope and trust.
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