2023, the Year of…

“A blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it.”
​~Marcus Aurelius

Today is the final day of 2022, acting as the bridge between the past and a fresh year of new possibilities. If you read one of my prior blog posts, A Year Marked by ____, you already know how I feel about New Year’s Resolutions. There’s nothing wrong with them; however, I’ve found that they may not be the most effective way to make a lasting change in one’s life. It seems intimidating to press a massive reset button on an annual basis. Rather, I prefer to press a smaller reset button each day and treat each new sunrise as a clean slate (and to be honest, my resolution is often long forgotten by the second week of January). So, last year, I tossed out the idea of New Year’s Resolutions and replaced it by marking the year with a single theme.

Last year, I chose the theme of grace. Many of us reach for an unrealistic standard of perfection. We set down the messy and beautiful realities of humanity and pick up something that is far too heavy for any of us to carry. The race for perfection is all too exhausting. Perhaps you can relate. To counter this, Jesus calls us to lay down the worldly standard of perfection and do our best to pick up God’s standard of grace. This practice changed my mindset in 2022. It helped to give myself the space and grace to grow and learn without letting shame, doubt, or discouragement sneak in. The year marked by grace helped me so much that I decided to continue this practice and choose a new theme for 2023.

This year, I wanted to pick a theme that acted as an extension of grace. I asked myself: What is the next step? If I learn to have grace for myself, what comes next? It was through the words of a song called “This is Our Story” by Keelan Donovan that I found my answer.

Acceptance.

If we have grace for ourselves, we are able to accept what life throws at us, embracing it as a part of our story. It’s the act of claiming that no matter what the future holds, this is my story and I will own every part of it. This reminds me of a quote by the wise Marcus Aurelius. In his book, titled Meditations, Aurelius says:

“The inner master, when confronted with an obstacle, uses it as fuel, like a fire which consumes things that are thrown into it. A small lamp would be snuffed out, but a big fire will engulf what is thrown at it and burn hotter; it consumes the obstacle and uses it to reach a higher level.”

Perhaps you’re in a phase of life that is far from where you hope to be. Maybe you’re in a line of work that doesn’t quite fulfill you the way you thought it would and you wonder if you’ll ever come to find that elusive “dream job” everyone speaks of. Or perhaps you’re scrolling through social media, inundated by the announcements of relationships, proposals, and baby reveals, wondering when it will be your time. Maybe you’ve received a recent diagnosis or unexpected injury and long for the clean bill of health you once took for granted. Wherever you are in life, I invite you to join me in a challenge that may change your life.

Rather than stare across the fence and long for what is on the other side, I encourage you to water the grass at your own feet. Take where you are in life and own it. Wear it proudly. This is your story. Claim and accept your beautiful, unique, and precious life.

The aforementioned quote by Marcus Aurelius, as well as Keelan Donovan’s inspirational song, acts as an encouragement to charge ahead into 2023, ready to embrace whatever is thrown our way and use it as fuel to become better and stronger. Our stories are each unparalleled, wild, one of a kind. How different would our lives look if we accepted and embraced them as they are?

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Photocred: Unsplash