“Happy New Year”. Those three simple words will invoke a different reaction in different people.
Maybe for you, the New Year is a chance for a new start, a fresh way of thinking – full of resolutions. Or maybe it fills you with dread, wondering how you’re going to get through another year.
There are many parents, carers, children and young people who flit between the two feelings, sitting somewhere inbetween the two, occasionally sliding nearer to one or the other.
And what’s with this need to make a resolution? Most of the time mine would be getting to the end of each day with my sanity intact and chronic pain at a reasonable level, and hopefully without comparing myself to other people…..too much!
That comparing thing – it’s hard not to isn’t it? When you look at the life you have, and the life others put on social media, it is very hard to be content. Someone elses child is doing this – and mine can’t. Someone else has gone somewhere and done this amazing thing – but we can’t because someone in our family uses a wheelchair or struggles with change – or worse still, are wrongly judged as not capable enough. And yet, no matter what the additional need is and who it affects, we know we are blessed. Yes we would want things to be easier for our child/sibling/other significant individual/ourselves, but no matter the differences – we will love them to the end of our collective ropes and beyond.
I don’t have a resolution as such – just to live out the fruit of the Spirit and bring hope to others. It’s what the bible asks us to on a daily basis – not as a New Year resolution but as a central part of our faith. Yes I will fail – daily, but I will try to keep going. Thank goodness we have the Grace of God and the presence of the Holy Spirit.
As this New Year gets underway I pray you would find Hope in the everyday, Grace through Jesus, and that you would know the presence of the Holy Spirit in every moment. I also pray that if you too are affected by ‘the spirit of comparison’ that you would find a release from that.
Philippians 4:11-13
11 I am telling you this, but not because I need something. I have learned to be satisfied with what I have and with whatever happens. 12 I know how to live when I am poor and when I have plenty. I have learned the secret of how to live through any kind of situation—when I have enough to eat or when I am hungry, when I have everything I need or when I have nothing. 13 Christ is the one who gives me the strength I need to do whatever I must do.
For your encouragement, here’s a link to a great blog written by one of our members/supporters. She writes regularly and is well worth following: A letter To The Parents Of A Struggling Child
