1/4/21 A Bittersweet Resolve

My New Year’s resolutions are very simple.  I want to grow…even more!

Contrary to the incessant chorus of laments about the terrible year we have just endured, my ‘Auld Lang Syne’  will be sung in a major (though bittersweet) key.  I choose to look back on the year I have just endured, as a year of personal growth unlike any other.  Through the angst of a worldwide pandemic, a racial reckoning and the polarization of the most divisive politics of my lifetime, I believe that I have become a better person having been stretched by the challenges, stresses and disappointments of 2020. 

If that is true, this new year offers a timely choice as the dis-ease continues to rage, seasoning major parts of 2021.  I can look back and say ‘good riddance’.  Or I can use the opportunity to continue in reflecting, perhaps discovering areas of personal growth — budding areas that with care and nurture can more fully become a part of who I am becoming.  ‘Good riddance!’ can’t wait for change.  ‘Hopeful reflection’ urgently wants to get the most out of the challenge.

Upon personal reflection, I humbly assess a greater sensitivity to the pain in others’ lives.  As the pandemic continues to rage, each day brings further need for grieving the loss as hundreds of thousands of precious lives are lost. I want to become even more sensitive to that painful reality.  I want to feel their pain and grieve their loss fully, as if they were my mother, my father, my sibling, my dear friend.  As a medical professional I deeply feel the fatigue and frustration of those on the front lines, giving their all to stem the tide, waging war on a relentless tsunami of disease.  I want to honor their commitment and resolve to do my part to lower that viral curve,  living out a concern for my fellow Americans and front line workers directly impacted by the surges.  

I have grown to understand that a virus is not the only cause of pain in ones life. The truth is that other contagions potentially wage a more vicious attack.  As racial reckoning exposes biases and inconsistencies of attitude, I have examined my own subconscious biases and with contrite humility had to confess that my human nature is far too often motivated by selfish orientation  and fear. I resolve to make any difference I can, exercising my power to lighten the load, heal the wound, expose the bigotry, love unconditionally.

As political divides deepen ever so ominously, promising scars of division that may forever be a part of our reality, I have strengthened my commitment to place my trust— not in an individual or a political party — but in my God who is still on His throne, and in these United States of America, one nation under His divine control, indivisible, offering liberty and justice to all.  Where our nation falls short of that ideal, I resolve to pray that God will show me all I can and should do to make it right.

I have learned that once you look for the blessing, you begin to see more and more to be thankful for.  This pandemic has revealed the treasure of a simpler lifestyle and a calendar free of commitments, offering time to explore new priorities. Confinement has encouraged my husband and me to assess the wisest use of our home, our time, our finances, focusing us on thanksgiving for all that we have.  Both of us have grown to value our ability to touch a heart through a written letter or a ZOOM call and seen that as a worthy goal for a day of confinement. Perhaps most significantly, we have become more and more thankful every day for the life and health that we, and those we love, are granted.

I resolve to nurture each and every budding shoot of personal growth — the fruits of 2020.  I never want to forget the lessons learned, the emotions felt, the insights gained during this bittersweet year.  It is my hope that when we return to a more normal existence — whenever that will be — that I have become a very different person for having survived — indeed thrived — through 2020!