It’s the end of the year… again. Each year seems to go by quicker than the last, doesn’t it? We joke about it, but sometimes it can be disheartening.
We can feel like nothing has really changed and we’re caught in an endless loop. Over and over again – Christmas, New Year, Easter, a birthday: one year older, work, holiday, another year gone by –
Life can seem like on unending circuit, particularly if you (or your loved one) have a chronic illness. This is because:
ONE: symptoms may come and go, but the underlying illness doesn’t get any better
TWO: everyone else may seem to ‘move on’, but you’re still fighting the same battle
THREE: it’s difficult to make plans and ‘move forward’ when ill health gets in the way
Why you’re moving forward this New Year (even when it doesn’t feel like it)
The thing is, as much as it may feel like it, your life is NOT cyclic. It’s a forward progression, and this is exciting! It means:
Circumstances will change, and (balance of probabilities) it won’t always get worse. Change brings room for hope.
If you’re a Christian there is a sure and certain future to look forward to, and it’s coming closer.
We’re all getting old together. All those people you feel are leaving you behind in their achievements? One day you’ll all (God-willing) be eighty together, and what will matter then? The quality of your experiences of the quality of your character?
Take heart friends. You’re on a journey, not a treadmill.
Despite mountains and valleys you will never be in the same place your started, and you will never tread the same roads twice. Experience, life and relationships move us forward.
Time itself moves us forward.
We do not need to struggle to try and break free of a rut, but only to live well the time put before us.
A thought-provoking perspective:
“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.
But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them.
It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”
― G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
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