Sometimes Life Just Gives You Lemons....

And sometimes it can last a whole year. The acidic taste in my mouth leftover from 2012 has me in a permanent pucker. I am sad. I am disenchanted. I am disheartened. I am not amused. As we pop a cork to celebrate the incoming new year. I am looking for something, anything, to quell the blue emptiness I am feeling inside. Where is my lemonade?

Sometimes, after buoying up on hope and optimism for awhile, I need to enter a glum period. A down period of rest and quiet hibernation. 2012 was that for me. The bright spots of hope were short and ephemeral. The dark days of strife and challenge seemed ever present. The funny thing about being in the dark is that your eyes adjust to it and, after a while you can see some light in the darkness. That is the extent of the high points of last year...minor glimpses of something through a haze of dark.

But it will not always be this way. I know this. I am a woman of faith. I believe in a strong God who has plans for me that are not visible from where I stand. From where I stand, my view is obstructed, and like all human beings, I forget sometimes that this is not all there is. When people say live in the moment, that is all well and good, but in order to truly live in the moment, you need (at least) three other things:

1) You need faith. If you don't believe there is a God and plan, how can you set down your worries, cast off your burdens and kick up your heels in the now? If you don't have faith, and you're stuck in a horrible moment, how will you get through it? Living in a horrible moment really stinks if no one's got your back.

2) You need an ability to let things go. Letting go of the past you are tripping on in your present, letting go of your worries that are based on hard life experiences. Letting go with the belief that those things that are meant to be permanent in your life are there, they are permanent, even if you don't control them and hold onto them and make them stay in your life. This is not about being ok with loss, it's about knowing and trusting that you will be ok, in spite of your sad feelings and loss.

3) You need patience. You need to be willing to wait for things to happen in their own time and to be able to delay your need for instant gratification. We live in an American world that has served to make us lazy and impatient. We are so well stuffed on the consumptions of our life that we want for nothing...this means when we DO want for something, we get petulant like a three-year-old stomping our feet. I WANT WHAT I WANT AND I WANT IT NOW. This will not do...wanting is about yearning for the future. Yearning for something you do not have or cannot have is not living in the moment.

This year, 2013, will be one for me to practice living in the moment. I have already started collecting words of wisdom to help feed me on this quest. I can do it. I know I can.