LIMINAL SPACE

LIMINAL SPACE

You should be reading a different pondering than what you are seeing this January 1, 2024. I had written another for this day but on December 28th, I was asked to actively remember 2023 as a springboard for celebrating the blessings and burdens of the year and in anticipation for 2024. For me, a look through the photos on my cellphone proved to be invaluable. It is a photo journal. I encourage you to do the same.

What I know to be true is this, had I depended solely on my memory, I most likely would have remembered the less than best events first – tragedies that happened and those averted, illness (my first ride in an ambulance), difficult diagnosis, car accidents, unpleasant encounters with loved ones, and death. While my photos supported the validity of these, they were not the whole story of 2023.

I traveled to amazing places with amazing people, saw some amazing things (the rescue of a person floating on a Styrofoam boat in open waters off of the coast of Cuba), learned some amazing things about other cultures, ate amazing food, experienced amazing joy, happiness, and radical hospitality and slept peacefully along the way (yes there are photos). I don’t remember the many times my husband and I received the blessing of offering hospitality to family, friends, and strangers. Nor did I remember the times I videoed my husband doing his silly dance. My love and appreciation for sunrise, for the unsung hero of the body – feet, and for plants and flowers punctuated the photos repeatedly. The photos taken at funerals captured the joy of seeing loved ones. Pictures taken as I recovered from vertigo revealed the blossoming of another facet of the creative me.

What was the learning of this exercise in this liminal space where one thing ends, and another is about to begin? Navigating this small space of uncertainty may be tricky and uncomfortable for some. Most of us have at least a day or two of unscheduled time during this season and we get to think, perhaps a little deeper than normal. For me, the exercise of actively remembering forced a reconciliation of what I remembered with what I actually experienced. There was more to rejoice about than to complain about and that realization alone was enough to get me excited and filled with anticipation for the coming year. It has been a difficult and great year.

If I were to make New Year’s resolutions, I believe this exercise might cause me to approach the process differently. I know that I go into the New Year primed to be positive and optimistic in whatever situation I may find myself, to worry less and to look for wonderment in unexpected places.

Psalm 103:2

PONDER THIS THOUGHT---Although uncomfortable, uncertainty can be transformative and valuable.