It’s been a heck of a year! I can’t surmise 365 days into a single Word document. The perils of a New Year’s Eve reflection are the proclivity to look over the mundane and monotonous and focus on the valleys and seemingly monumental moments. But if Peterson’s taught me anything, it is that life, days and years and who we are and are becoming consists of this stuff and this place.

The daunting, boring moments of driving 5 hours around Perth 2 days a week for 8 months, dropping boxes of coffee, listening to hours of music and podcasts – thinking, “Is this all there is?” Is this what I’m called to?

And the high moments of walking the Stirling Ridge, reading, writing, befriending, and settling a little more into the bones and body that is my existence in this history and this place.

The lows of falling hard, dealing with consequences, and becoming KNOWN and SEEN by my community and leaders.

In the last weeks, I’ve become increasingly fond of Psalm 32… and perhaps that has been the prayer that best encapsualtes this year. Coming and continuing to know that my bones waste away when I keep silent…

“When I keep it all inside,
my bones turned to powder….
all the juices of my life dried up.” (PS 32 3 – 5, MSG)

When I fumble around in the shadows of mistakes and shame, when I isolate and find my soul in an existential pretzel, I am less than, I am robbed of life, blazing true life.

But as I’ve come to learn to pray, honestly and openly, and confess, again honestly and openly – when

“I let it all out…

When I said, “I’ll make a clean breast of my failures to God.” (Psalm 32: 5, THE MSG)

That’s when and where I am safe and seen and loved! There and only there – naked, vulnerable and open – can I enter into the green pastures of salvation life.

So, as I write this, I am trying to retrace the trails of my brain from the past year – the moments I missed and the moments I made.

The moments I failed and the moments I made more of Grace.

The smiles and wins, the laughs and tears, the friends mad and lovers lost, the jobs left and started, the books opened and left unfinished, the sentences savoured, the arguments and prayers and dreams deferred, the babies born and birthdays and weddings and feasts and funerals. 

Though, as I started, I cannot truncate this year into these short words (funny how sometimes we think we can shrink God down into measly words and pages), this rambling is my attempt to pray or to offer this final day to You.

It is right and good to have spent time in Psalm 32 and Ephesians 1 this morning. To sip a coffee, try and hide in angst from how little time I’ve spent with You lately, and then finally enter into the beautiful Mystery of Your gentle presence. To enter into Joy and Rest.

So from this place – on this final day of the year 2024 – my soul says:

How blessed is God! And what a blessing He is (Ephesians 3:3, The MSG)!

To this I say Yes, and Amen!

Happy New Year’s, Friends.