This time of year always spurs me to reflection and planning. Mostly planning honestly. I love the clean slate feel of a fresh year. But sometimes it’s also helpful to consider the year gone by for what it was before moving on again.

I want to receive the gift of the year, but instead of just reflecting on days gone by I want to stop and consider the gift of them.

Reflecting is just touching on the life without maybe much accepting, whereas receiving is more a leaning into how it was and where a life is going now because of it.

I can receive the gift of the year.

Hard with easy. Joyful with painful. Trying with Rest. Stubbornness and grace.

Even the dichotomy of these words strikes against the idea I’d like to carry with me. Each moment is a kaleidoscope of many things, not just one or the other.

Because receiving the pieces together as a whole is just as important as pulling the highlights reel and reveling in days of yore.

I can take the year for what it was and move on from it instead of maybe getting caught choosing what was better or worse.

The gifts of my year: 9 months of pregnancy – again,  a chunky happy baby, a writers conference, many hours at home breaking up fights and doing chores, many things left done and undone as time and life allowed, many books read, many movies enjoyed with my husband, many weeks, many days, many moments…

many seconds, hairs, breaths, thoughts and everything in between.

The gift of my days following me around in the helter-skelter and the serene.

There’s really no pulling the pieces apart into good or bad. It leaves my mind unrested and discontent.

But instead if I can reflect and receive the great days and the ones in-between I can keep moving forward knowing that life isn’t black and white, or even gray.

It’s simply life, as we make it, and not.

Mine is a bright orange life, thank you very much.

Because I said so.

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