As the year draws to a close many people review what has happened during the year and make plans for the new year. Many will view the new year with hope and I am usually one of those. But 2019 has not been a very nice year for me and 2020 does not show signs of being better. In fact, it may well be worse.
At this time of the year there is encouragement in Christian circles to find a word for the new year. It is usually something uplifting and in previous years mine have.
Usually the word for me comes very quickly. But this year I have a list of words:
Love
Hope
Peace
Reconciliation
Trust
Faith
Healing
Stand.
I believe all those words apply this year with healing being the word that underpins all others. That may seem counterintuitive. Doesn’t Love, or Faith, or Trust underpin all others? Not this year, lack of healing blocks the other words.
All my life I have begged God to make things better. To make my parents love me. To stop my father’s abuse. To stop my mother’s constant undermining. To stop the bullying at school. To send me someone I could feel safe with. To stop the damage of the past from constantly triggering me outside my window of tolerance. To send me friends.
It seemed God did not want those things for me. My parents never loved me, nor did my siblings. My father’s abuse never stopped. My mother died still undermining me and looking at me with hatred. The bullying never stopped. I still encounter bullies in adult life. They are more subtle as adults and usually resort to lies told behind my back to people willing to believe them. The bullying has been particularly bad this year. I have not spent much of the year within my window of tolerance.
And I am supposed to help people!
But God did send me my husband to love me. And I do feel safe with him.
And God sent me friends from the first day I started school. I didn’t realise it because my father’s constant abusive rants about what a horrible person I was - So horrible no one would ever love me and I would never have friends – drowned out the truth. And my mother’s constant comments about how unlikeable and unlovely I was led me to believe no one wanted to be my friend. So all I remembered was the friendships my sister destroyed or the friends who inexplicably disappeared. Therefore I believed I was unlikeable. God has shown me over the years that I was never without friends. More recently He has shown me that I lived near a migrant hostel and most of my friends were migrant children whose family would move away to find more permanent accommodation. Thanks to God’s gift of love for others, I was willing to befriend all the newcomers and not stick to exclusive cliques of friends. My friendships didn’t end, they just moved away.
The likeability issue has been prominent this year and I have been very aware that this has been my ‘thorn in the flesh’. It is an area of my life that satan uses to seek to derail me. Other years I have been able to ignore that thorn because things have gone well. But for the last year I have been subjected to bullying by a particularly nasty neighbour. I am not the first she has bullied (but they have all moved away) and I won’t be the last.
I have stood firm in faith. I have prayed for this woman. I have handed over my hurt at other people in our little cul-de-sac believing her and refusing to talk to me. I have cried to God. I have read the Psalms and cried with David at the unfairness of life. But here I am at the end of the year and nothing is better. In fact it is worse.
Her lies and nastiness shouldn’t bother me. I don’t want to be her best buddy. I don’t want to be the other neighbour’s best buddies. I just want to “live and let” my neighbours in peace. I want to be able to wave a hello, not have people turn their backs to avoid saying hello when I walk or drive past. I acknowledge everybody. I love people and feel great compassion for the hurt of others. But this has stumped me.
I actually find myself feeling angry at this woman and those who believe her lies. I find myself wishing them ill. I resist the temptation to say nasty things about them, although I so want to. But the more I am angry and the more I think angry thoughts, the more I block God.
As I prayed and meditated on the word I wanted for the coming year God spoke to me. He said
“Be empty that you may receive my healing and joy.”
As I contemplated that God expanded the words for me:
“Be empty of all rage, malice and anger (because that is not who you are) that you may receive my healing and joy.”
In addition to my personal woes, there have been a lot of bad things happening in the world. So many countries are run by politicians whose only interest is their extremist views, looking after their wealth and not caring about justice or the poor, widow or refugee. That negativity was so bad I absented myself from social media for a few months.
There are also bad things happening individually to people.
This means we have great burdens to carry. We carry a burden of care for our fellow human and we carry a burden of care for ourselves.
God’s message about being empty applies to the world issues as well as the personal ones.
We all need a 2020 filled with love, hope, peace, reconciliation, trust, faith, standing and most of all healing.
In 2020 may we all be empty that we may receive healing and joy.