In Like a Lamb

I spent the first morning of this untouched year on my front porch with a dear friend. We drank coffee and watched the sun rise through the red pines while our kids played inside. We talked through the trials and triumphs of the previous twelve months, some of them distant memories, others much fresher wounds. When our mugs went cold, my middle son brewed a fresh pot and carefully placed the refilled cups back in our hands, then joined us for a while. The entire morning was soft and sweet and comfortable, qualities I value more and more with every passing year. Buried beneath cozy blankets, protected from the January chill, we welcomed 2024 in like the lamb I pray she proves to be.

Just hours before, we had sent December out in a blaze of glory, sparklers and smoke filling our driveway as children spun in circles until the sugar had worn off. I have seen my fair share of New Year’s Eves through the blurred vision of too much champagne, but since having kids, the shift toward presence on these hallmark midnights has been strong and steady. I have exchanged booze for board games and a full recollection of our evening. I am finding that as I age, these memories are a gift I am rarely willing to trade for another round of drinks.

This shift toward presence is the greatest miracle my children have brought me over this decade of parenthood. While they arrived in all different manner – planned and prepared for, surprising and scary, heartbreaking and hopeful – they have burst into our lives as nothing short of a miracle every single time. And every single time, a bit of me bursts and shifts, grows and heals, as well, each change a small miracle in its own right.

This is the natural course of things. With age comes wisdom, and with children comes responsibility and reflection. Some of us are strong and determined enough to reach our potential without ever experiencing the mini-mirrors that are our progeny. And some of us, like myself, require more of a push. Had I been left to wander this Earth on my own, I fear very little evolution would have taken place. I needed a catalyst (or four or five or six) to push me beyond the safety nets I had constructed, safety nets that kept me small and tied.

But with each miracle child came an awakening, and a strand of that net unraveled, loosening its grip bit by bit. Much to my surprise, as I have stretched and grown, I have become grounded at the same time. The duality of this expansion has been a favored token from this last spin around the sun. In it, I have finally found the freedom to rest.

Ten years ago, I might have missed the beauty that was all around me at the birth of this new year – the peace found in a few quiet hours on the porch, the love in a pot of coffee brewed by nine-year-old hands, the sweetness of a night fully remembered. I might have missed the gift that is a friend who comes to you perfect and whole in their own gorgeous way of moving through this life. Ten years ago, I was too busy looking for projects and people to fix to appreciate anything that came to me unbroken. I was searching for something, anything to avoid sitting inside this unfinished body of mine. I needed a lion of a year to distract me, a lion of a year to prove my unfinished body meant anything inside this giant world.

To be counted, I needed to go and do. I needed to be tired and overwhelmed and tearing at the seams. I needed projects and people ripe for fixing, helping everything outside of me find its potential so there was no threat I might reach my own. I needed to pile up tally marks to confirm I had lived a life each year, that my time here was not wasted because the tally marks said so.

The past years spent inside the lion have taken their toll, so much so that I am no longer certain where the noise ends and I start. It’s time to sit and let those swirling particles settle. I have tried this in small doses throughout the past year, flexing my tiny new muscles to see how a slower pace feels. Now I open my arms wide to a January of quiet discernment, and a February and March and onward until all of the sediment has fallen and I can trust that my movement is for purpose, not proof or pageantry.

So as the winter wind pulls at the remaining leaves of autumn urging them to let go for a season and allow for the coming spring, this year, I ask for the same. I pray for a lamb of a year, gentle days to carry us through. I ask for quiet and calm mornings spent looking out on the pines and evenings dancing on our driveway as we wait for the all-assuring moon to appear. I ask for friends who arrive whole and vibrant, yet messy and comfortable in their own undone-ness. I ask for work and purpose that complements, not competes with all the other loves of my life. I ask for the continued duality of growth and rootedness for myself and this family of ours, knowing the miracle of each child, my partner, and my own unfinished self, hold so much more sweetness and surprise if only I can be still and wait for the coming spring.

Ashley, Woman of a Certain Grace