No good resolutions

Here it is. After a very long silence, my first thoughts of 2016. Not that I am just now thinking them. I am just now sharing them, that’s all 😉

New Year. Full of expectations. A new page. It comes just in time, after Christmas.?

Christmas. We look forward to it for so long and it seldom fulfills our expectations. Or maybe we don’t even look forward to it anymore because after all, we are cynical Belgians, and we have to keep up our reputation.?

So Christmas didn’t fulfill my expectation, although I knew that beforehand – because I wanted the Christmas of my childhood. The one with traditions and people who are not here anymore, or don’t live in the same house. I wanted the time of magic and fun times.

I knew beforehand that I am not a child anymore, that I have children of my own now and that family gatherings?with small children are not all that.
I knew that the Christmas parties of then are not now, that they have changed.

Still, it must have been there, deep down. Because there was an emptiness, a missing. Logic and understanding didn’t prevent it.

I couldn’t quite forgive the people of now for not being the people of then.

I couldn’t quite forgive the houses that they were not the houses of then. With the same corners and rooms and memories that got lost in time.

I couldn’t forgive myself for worrying about tomorrow and how tired I would be. But not worry? I couldn’t manage that either, because I would most certainly be tired.

New Year.?

It came too. My expectations were out the window by then. Last year, last year December, I still relished the thought. New. No mistakes in it yet. A clean slate. New agenda. New lists.

A few days before New Years that feeling was gone, too. New Year. Yuck. A day like any other. And if I am tired at 11:30, why on earth would I stay up half an hour longer just because some silly person decided that 12, that’s the wonderful and special moment? Besides, the 12 isn’t even the same. All over the world there’s so many different seconds that make the 12, the big moment. ?The second in which you toast and kiss and laugh. And I so hate toasting and kissing. Not laughing, although I don’t do it nearly enough.

That is my sister’s fault. She just had to go and get married, and leave the house of our forefathers. Fathers. Right, just father. And then I figured I might as well do the same. And my husband, he doesn’t giggle with my stupid jokes. Sister oh sister, do you miss the Christmas of then, too? ?And all that delightful giggling until we couldn’t catch our breath anymore?

But anyway. New Year. It came and went and I didn’t get vision, passion, plans or the will to do anything. Instead, all of my plans were sucked away in the vacuum that was 2015. That made me depressed, because in January one should make good resolutions and new lists.

I only wanted to make the resolution to not make any resolutions because resolutions are stupid and everything is stupid.

I am exhausted. I am so often unbelievably impatient with my children. A lot of the time, I am the opposite of the wife and sister and friend that I should be. I am still so prejudiced and I whine and gossip and moan and I let fear for tomorrow ruin my day.

Why would I go and make good resolutions?

Then in the end I go to God, because that is where I always end up, although I sometimes wait too long – resulting in me being down in the depths of despair.

I read His word and talk to Him about what is keeping me busy and sometimes I just repeat that one short line from Jeremiah:?“Hope for the future” if I don’t feel any hope. Today I say sorry yet again because I shouted at a 4-year-old wild child, and today I smile at myself in the mirror to exercise the muscles.