Now We Can Leave Last Year Behind!Having a January birthday can be a procrastinators dream, come true. While others might have slipped up or even already given up on a New Year’s resolution I don’t even decide upon mine until my birthday. I have always considered January 20, which is my birthday, my own personal New Year.
I was thinking, "What’s better than a resolution, which you may or may not keep?" Answer: A prediction. But often predictions are really no more dependable than the weather forecast. If so where are our flying cars and the other amenities we drew pictures of and wrote about in 5th grade as our predictions about the year 2000?
And speaking of crazy predictions- Art Bell, a quirky late night talk radio host, who spent the long nights talking about aliens and conspiracy theories, had a prediction show each year in which he would let the unscreened callers state their predictions. He would then review these predictions during the next year while he took note of the new predictions. This show always included a few crazy “end of the world” scenarios, some personal predictions and a few funny ones.
Art Bell would have loved the spirit of the “This American Life” episode “2010” in which instead of resolutions or predictions that we really have no control over, the stories focused on real predictions, things that we know for sure will happen.
So this was going to be my, “real predictions of things that are actually – no kidding, going to happen this year, to me, to people I know, etc.” And to follow their format I was going include: "A death, a birth, a 2nd graders fate in school and the fate of the middle east.”
I decided to skip the morbid thought of death for now and move onto births. My brother and sister-in-law, Jeff and Mickie will have a new baby. Kenneth’s brother Eric and his wife will also be having another baby. As I begin typing this info I think will pity, “And we will NOT be having a baby this year.” And right then I was brought back to the year 2001.
January 2001, having exhausted the fertility treatments we were willing to try at the time we had decided to adopt a baby. We had begun working with an adoption agency and had chosen an orphanage in Russia. They kept telling us, “By the end of the year, you will have your baby.” I began repeating this phrase, to myself and others. “We are having a baby, by the end of the year we will have our baby.”
In the middle of January I lost my Grandma Awsumb and by February the adoption and a baby was the last thing on my mind while I flew back to spend time with my Auntie Laurel. I wanted to help her clean out Grandma’s house, but also to just be with her during such a sad time. My relationship with my grandparents had always been pretty formal and that week I was able to really get to know them while I cleaned out their home. My Grandpa and I made up our own silly games and inside jokess - as Laurel was the boss. As I found all the mementos she kept of us grandkids I could see how proud of us she was. And as I sorted through her personal items, I got to learn more about her relationship with my grandfather and see how much they had loved one another and their personal commitment to each other for over 60 years.
On February 28th Seattle experienced a 6.8 earthquake. Later that evening we went to dinner with a friend and his parents. The food made me so sick to look that that I lined up drinks and menus to keep me from viewing the meat, which lie naked on the plates mocking me. Bonnie asked her son, “Is Wendy pregnant?” Our friend Robert answered, “Don’t ask” knowing we had been trying to have a baby without success for years.
Of course a few weeks later we found out that by some miracle I was pregnant. And after a few scares at the beginning and end of the pregnancy we were blessed with our little miracle baby.
What was so funny about that year was that I didn’t make a resolution or a prediction. I made a statement. Do I dare make the same statement for 2010?
“We will have a baby by the end of the year.”
Maybe not yet, but from now on, no more resolutions or predictions, simply statements.
What’s your statement for the year 2010?
3 comments:
My statement for the year.... my first baby will be in Kindergarden, and I will have a 3rd child at home. By the end of 2010 Jeff will only have 2 more semesters!! (wow - the thought makes me cry - I can't wait) By the end of the year we will have been married for 7 years and lived in Idaho for 5 !! Life is not perfect, life is hard, but Life is Worth it!! That is my statement!! Plus, Family is the best thing ever invented and I love all mine - my parents, all my sisters, brother in laws, sister in laws, nieces & nephews, and parents in law... with out them I don't think I would survive this Life. Most of all I love my Savior Jesus Christ!!
I assume you've heard about Scott Adams and his experiments with affirmations--writing down something you want to have happen fifteen times per day as a way of focusing on achieving it. In his case it worked weirdly well. (I've tried it exactly once, and it also worked weirdly well for me. Still not quite sure about the mechanics of *how* it works, only that it does appear to work.)
The other thing that is sort of interesting is the idea of loosing someone from your life right at the same time someone new is coming into your life. To imagine that it was during all those sad times that we were dealing with my Gma's death that a new life was beginning inside of me.
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