Embrace

January is always a hard month for me. It’s a narrative I’m trying to change, but until then I find myself trudging through the darker days. I know to look for the beauty in small things. I know to get back into my exercise routine. I know that it often just takes time to settle into the rhythms of a new year. But something else tugs at my soul.

There’s a deep-seated weariness as I find myself “gearing up” mentally for another year in the US. Another year away from home. Another year closer to my eldest daughter getting her driver’s license, dating an American guy, and sealing our fate to stay here forever. Another year further from the dream of my children growing up with their cousins under an African sky.

But that’s just it; it is a dream. A recurring dream that rears its head each January as if to mock my choices that have curated a completely different reality. It is also a good dose of disorganized thinking that I’m not ashamed to admit. Who, if anyone, can control the events of the next year, day, or even hour? Why then do I fear the imagined dotted line between my daughter turning sixteen and a future of cooking Thanksgiving dinners for my American grandchildren? Talk about getting ahead of myself.

Despite this introspection, the heaviness lingers as I fight my way into an acceptance of this new year still plagued by a pandemic, of my home being in Austin, and of my daughter’s coming of age. Transitions echo past losses and can often trigger grief, so I’ve made it a practice each January to spend time off of social media to be quiet, to read, to journal, to pray. I asked God for a word for the new year. 

Embrace.

I felt the whisper in my spirit like a quiet challenge. Don’t just accept, embrace. Could I embrace the coming year and its continued challenges with an expectation for how it could shape me? Could I embrace the new phase my daughters were entering instead of only grieving what no longer was? And could my wandering soul embrace all that life has to offer here instead of longing for an imagined future elsewhere?

My first test came when decluttering my youngest daughter’s room over the holidays. I gave each of the girls a box for keepsakes, with the premise that the rest would have to go. As I stood in the adjacent room folding laundry, I could hear them reminiscing about their childhood: what dolls they remembered playing with, what stuffed animal they got where, what they were ready to give away, and what they were not. When they collectively decided to part with the doll’s house, I had to bite my tongue and remember: embrace. Accept that the days of dolls and dress-up are over and embrace the days of driving lessons and dating that lie ahead. 

The bigger challenge for me is the homing device that gets triggered at the beginning of each year. With travel to the UK and South Africa still restricted, I have to accept that visiting my home and my family is out of the question for now. Embrace. I hear the word inviting me to let it settle deeper in my heart. Embrace the opportunity to let your roots grow a little deeper in Austin. Embrace your place in the community. Embrace the adventure that awaits even here within these borders.

As a reminder of the journey I’m on, I’ve put this word on my magnet board in the kitchen next to all those I’ve collected from our travels. It invites me to be present, to engage in the moment, and to embrace the life I’m actually living. Not the one I was living, or dreamed of living, or hope to live one day. It’s the here and now surrounded by the memories of and gratitude for what was and what will be again.