Happy New Year (A Peek Into My Mind)

What part of Happy New Year don't I understand? New: Never Before, Unused, A Beginning of Something. Year: A calendar representation of time marked off in 365 days, broken into groups of 7 representing a week, broken into hours of 24 and so on and on and on. (This year being a leap year just makes for confusion.) Happy: A State of Euphoria, Pleasure, Joy, Enjoying a Happening, Circumstance, or Event. Got all that.

As a child, I didn't like change (and I haven't changed much in that respect). I remember one NYE being distressed because 1949 was good why did we need a 1950. It was bad enough when in my short span of life the numbers kept going up one, but this was up by 10! Go figure. My mind never did, does not now, nor ever will track like the minds belonging to others. I remember sitting in my favorite security spot, Dad's armchair with matching ottoman, thinking I would like to grab the calendar edge to keep the pages from flying away. That mental picture still comes to mind at various times.

That mental picture of the woman hanging on to calendar pages as if her life depended upon it was there when my so very handsome and wonderful new husband was given a departure date to leave for Viet Nam. Concurrent with that was the pending birth of our first child. How do you anxiously desire something and dread another at the same time. Stop the calendar; that's how! Little did I know. I thank a gracious and merciful God that I did not know. Helen was born to us as a beautiful baby girl, followed four days later by the death of my father, followed ten more days after that by Dave's departure for Viet Nam. Some tornado came along and ripped nearly an entire year off my calendar and stole memories from an overwrought mind between August 10, 1966 and December 31, 1967.

The mental picture has occurred often when something was so right I wanted it to stay. Marc's birth and the look on Dave's face when he saw in his son his own face reflected back. Is that the expression God wears when we get it right? Dave's and my 25th wedding anniversary. While that anniversary is good for a whole 'nother blog, let's just say the chaos of preparing for it was forgotten in the wonderful evening we spent together. In the morning we awoke to the news that the pipes had frozen at home and we needed to get our warm bodies out into the sub zero Minnesota weather to come home and fix them.

Holding sleeping children and then grandchildren is another time when I don't want those calendar pages to even flutter! There is bliss in holding a sleeping baby that far exceeds any other pass time. When else do you receive such complete trust as when a child falls asleep in your arms? Where else can you find the ability to stay so still no matter how many extremities are painfully buzzing and pinging because they too have fallen as sound asleep as the child?

That mental image was present with me the night of 10 September 2001. Little did I know. I am so thankful there is a gracious and merciful God that doesn't let us know. It was such a perfect evening. A beautiful blue sky slowing dimming into a gloaming like none other. Cool air after a very warm day was creeping over everything bringing rest and relaxation. I didn't want to go in the house and end the day as I sensed life would never be like that again.

So. Uh. Happy . . . New . . . Year. My new year doesn't start until May 20. I an no longer new -- only my years are new. I only had two chances at being new. One was at my birth and I hope I did well because I don't remember. The other was the day I asked God to take over the life I was not living well and to make me into His kind of new person. I've dissected New and Year every which way and still cannot decide if I have a grip (don't you dare tell me to get a grip!) The happy part. That's the difficult one. Why are we supposed to be happy just because the calendar pages have flown away and a new bundle have been put in our hands? Why do people get all dressed up, flock to parties (alcoholic and non-alcoholic) to sing, dance, throw streamers, wish everyone "Happy New Year" and go home to face the first day of the new year exhausted and out of sorts? Is that happy? Could our psyches absorb 365 happy days? How would we differentiate between happy, happy-happy, and gloriously happy if all of them are happy?

I have started telling newly weds I hope they experience enough hardship to understand the good times for without measure in this imperfect world, there is no way to experience true happiness. Happiness is not joy. Joy is what the angels knew at the birth of Christ and great joy was known by the angels when He triumphed over the grave and once again ascended into Heaven. Joy is the persistent, all pervading, sense that in the midst of chaos all is well. Joy is what comes when one has suddenly had an insight of God and sees the magnificence of God in His Glory rather than someone to fear or hide from.



Thus another turn of the calendar has come and gone and already the calendar pages are getting away from me no matter how hard I hang on. Each day brings some disappointment, some laughter, some pain, some peace, some frustration, some love, and throughout all there is life. As long as there is life, there is hope. There is hope for those I love to find true refuge and joy in knowing God (the real God who cares for us -- not the faulty God we Christians represent to others). There is hope for a better world when God fulfills His promise to bring a "new Heaven and a new earth". There is hope I will find more golden joy than tin happiness in the things God has given to me: health, home, food, family, freedom, work to do. May I not take any of them for granted. May I keep the kind of mind that evaluates and weighs the worth of living.

May your 2012 be filled with discovery, laughter, kindness, delight, perseverance, love, and joy. Since that took a long time to compose, I guess someone was trying to make it less of a mouthful when they coined "Happy New Year"!