Ringing in the New Year

How time does fly!

When our first child entered the world, many people passed on the information, "As soon as you have children, the years begin to pass faster."  We didn't believe it.  Now, we do.  Sometimes, only experience can teach us.

As our year fills with activities that only having children in the household can bring, we find each block on the calendar covered with details of events, times, and reminders to do something, get something or go somewhere.  Each calendar date hems itself with lines on each of four sides.  These boundary lines mark that date and hold only so much.  Each day represented holds only 24 hours. Finite.  Impossible to stretch further, despite our wishes and prayers otherwise.

Memory, I feel thankful to note, does not work the way days and dates do.  Though the bringing of children into the world has made each Christmas celebration seem to occur back-to-back, the joyful memories have filled the time in between with glad anticipation and a more focused view of what Christmas really means.  The presence of our children and family makes the sacrifice of God, giving his only Son for our salvation, that much more compelling.

Memories color birthdays,  too.  We add them to various calendar blocks and build anticipation over what that new year of chronological age will bring, what milestones a child will reach, what goals a person will meet or exceed, what life each person has lived in between birth and the blowing out of candles on a cake.  The calendar boxes can't hold all of this, any more than they can hold all the gifts received over the lifetime of many of the birthdays enclosed within the boxes on the paper.

Every Thanksgiving brings hundreds or thousands of thankful moments, gleaned over the years; more than can ever fit in that 2-1/2-inch square box on the November page.  Thank you to God for everything, and that we have life and breath to offer it, as well as enough food and family for sharing.  The calendar leaves only space enough for an announcement.  Our memories  harvest the rest, rounding out the holiday of giving thanks, plus space for trimmings.

Each year, the "8" box in June reminds me that my husband and I have succeeded, by the grace of God, to keep at this marriage with all our hearts and to devote to each other more than the box  allowed us as a marker will ever manage to encapsulate.  That small, borrowed space can never show the time, energy and happiness of a married couple.  It cannot depict the sadness and struggle and sometimes angry frustration that occurs in the marriage trenches. It cannot file the successes and failures and the lessons learned through the years.  In short, it sparks memory.  It can never store it.

Every New Year's Eve, just like the one we celebrate today, marks a wealth of memories, and also brings with it a hope for the future:  for improvement in this life, for hope of the next one.  It appeals to our "do over" state of mind as humans.  Fallible and future-oriented, we hold out hope that the coming year will allow us to fix our erring ways, to bring out our best, and to finally stick to that diet.  The space on the calendar marked "31" marks a finish line of a sort, and the turn of the calendar page will, in theory, wipe the slate clean with a fresh calendar offering a new year's worth of empty boxes for the filling.

May we fill them with good, God-honoring things.  May we learn from the previous pages in our own personal histories.  May we pray in the New Year, and follow it up with daily prayer to guide each entry we make in the boxes spread before us.

Let us each live 2013 with godly purpose, focusing on our Lord, our marriages, our families and others.  We don't need calendars or small boxes to keep track of the comings and goings of our hearts as we reach out to others in our lives.  We need only focus on reaching out and doing for others.  God will keep track of everything.

Happy New Year!