… everyone faces that year, when you either swim or sink, the year that makes or breaks us. The period when everything caves in and we struggle to find anything to rescue. We are hit from left, right, centre, back, front, every possible direction, it is an onslaught from everywhere. All we know and trust in is violently rocked. We are at the championship point of the game and we know with the next swing we either win or loss. There is no in between. And when the shaking is all done, all we have left is just us and our birthday suite. Whether we make it or not is dependent on what is in us, what we are truly made up of. It is no longer about the ephemeral but the long lasting and sustainable virtues and character that we have either developed and cultivated or have not. This is the years that separates the boys from the men, the girls from the women, the leaders from the followers, the standing from the fallings. A truly pivotal point, the deciding year indeed!
The deciding year, is intense like no other, when we think we can take no more, a whole truck load of them arrives, when we think the camel back is already broken more straw is loaded on. When we think we have reached our very limit, we are pushed even further. The year when those things that use to make sense stop making sense. The equation can no longer be solved, the book no longer balances. Our positioning is disturbed, our bearing is unclear, we float, we wonder, we don’t know what will become of us, we don’t know where we will land, we have been buffeted on all sides.
We have been pushed out of the plane and we don’t know if the parachute will open up, that split second when in a crash and we wonder if the airbag will deploy, if the oxygen mask will drop, if the bulletproof vest will deflect bullets. We have never been in any of these situations and now is the poignant point, the pivotal one, we are struggling for breath, gasping unsure if we will make it. The glue that held us together has loosen, the umbilical cord is snapped and we wail as we enter a world we know not. The deciding year is the year we are born into a new era, a new world, new relationships, new anchors, we long to crawl back into the womb of that which we knew and understood, but we have been forcefully thrust out and there is no going back, we have been born into what we have been born into and there is no going back. We have landed into a family we are not sure we like the look of but that is our potion. We have been snapped from that which we use to know. We must learn the ways of this new world and swim in this unfamiliar waters. We must leatn to accept and love this new family.
The deciding year is a strong year, one of the hardest we would ever experience, if not the hardest. The year that propels us into our destiny. The worse tragedy is that some are right in the middle if this period amd have no clue, are unconscious and undiscerning, treating it is any other year and lamenting the woes that have befallen them in the same manner that a new born child laments his entrance into the world. We celebrate each year our birthday but the actual day of birth is usually a painful day for both the birther and the birthed. The deciding year is akin to our birthday and as we lament and wail from all we are going through we must understand that some are rejoicing at our arrival, because we are the ones that has been waited for. Pain is the price we pay for our birth, our relevance, our acceptance, our support etc.
Our deciding year is our time of birth into newness, therefore rejoice and yet again I say rejoice.
Beautiful Ivory 