1. What do you want to acknowledge yourself for in regard to 2013? (What did you create? What challenges did you face with courage and strength? What promises did you keep to yourself? What brave choices did you make? What are you proud of?)
i installed picasa on my computer yesterday (why didn't i do this years ago?). as i scrolled through several years of pictures one word seemed to overpower me: create. pictures of my house either crazy messy or pristine (often due to some party). so many projects--gardens, baking, writing, children's projects and i am kind of shocked at how often i move around pictures and knick knacks. as i saw the kids "growing" through the pictures i was stuck at what a wonderful life they do have. i am most grateful for 2013 as a continuation of creating a beautiful life and recognizing it at its end.
i do think i was brave this year. i tried new things (meditation, meditation retreat, trek, relief society presidency, family history, writing through nanowrimo) and grasped old things that had become hard for me (public speaking, attending the endowment session at the temple). i kept my goals. i think nanowrimo may have been a favorite manifestation of that.
i am proud of that picture above. me. where i am today. who i am today. the relationships i have.
(the canvas print lynett gave me for christmas--that may have made me cry).
2. What is there to grieve about 2013? (What was disappointing? What was scary? What was hard? What can you forgive yourself for?)
this year my "soul-stice" sisters and i had planned to get together after the new year, like last year to make our vision boards and talk about 2013 and plan 2014 (it is still in the plans). these were the questions we answered last year and i began to think of the thing i would "burn" from 2013--some pain or regret. i couldn't think of anything. well, perhaps the same thing i had burned from the year before, "anger." still working on the times that i lose it, but really 2013 had been an absolutely amazing year for us.
and then shortly after christmas our hearts broke wide open. we will always mourn the day we lost steven. i really had no concept of what something like this would feel like. having lost grandparents, great-grandparents and others close to me before--i had no idea how my heart would be carved out by the unexpected death of someone we love who was so young. no idea. my friend olivia said this, "It is definitely a time to mourn and it will be for awhile. And it'll change and swell and crash and recede and then do it again. Grief is a strange companion. Both a healing and a drowning friend."
i am certain this grief will continue to carve us out this year. i hope the space it leaves behind can be filled with an increased understanding for our purpose and priorities.
3. What else do you need to say about the year to declare it complete? The next step is to say out loud, "I declare 2013 complete!" How do you feel? If you don't feel quite right, there might be one more thing to say...
it almost seems wrong to move forward into 2014, when such a big part of our heart is in 2013 (losing steven). but this is what i am grateful for and something i thought about often this last week. . .i am so grateful for the whispers that i continually listened to this year. . . i had no idea what a tragedy would come to our family at its close. i am grateful specifically for the promptings to work on our family history. i am certainly grateful for the work i put in for the meditation. i know that physically, mentally and spiritually i would not have handled this the same way i would have a year ago. even the simple logistics of the funeral and being with so many people and saying the prayer would have been too much for me. but the resilience i felt like i personally was able to draw on was a priceless gift. and i don't know that i have ever felt closer to tim than in that week. to be so focused on him and his family and watching his strengths as he helped organize, make phone calls, and speak at his brother's funeral. as i watched him i was overwhelmed at love for him--to see him make people laugh and cry, to hear his testimony and to see his goodness was amazing. i feel so grateful for our family and our life together.
"We go to the temple to make covenants with Heavenly Father. We return home to keep them." --Linda K. Burton.
i am grateful that we started off the year with davis' baptism. i'm grateful to have seen the work of covenants through my temple work this year. . .and it was such a beautiful moment to be with the andreoli family in mid-December and see tim's family together as our newest niece teia was blessed and then to be in that same chapel just three weeks later and hear tim's sister and brother speak about covenants at steven's funeral services.
most of our lives are spent in the "return[ing] home and keep[ing] them." i think again that is what daily will be for me this year. the everyday that when we scroll through is messy and beautiful and even our our deepest aches we see the beauty around us.
"Marriage and Parenting are the messiest and most beautiful things I have ever done in my life. I’ll take them both because the beautiful is so. . . good that it makes all the messy in the world worth wading through."--momastery.com