Joy for You in the New Year

My Hope for 2019

“You clothed me with Joy that my heart may sing your praises” - Psalm 30: 11-12

This morning, on the Eve of the New Year, I nestle into my chair, set my hot cup of coffee down, and breath. It’s still dark outside and the house is silent. This is my morning ritual – a chance for some soul care before the day brings its hurried rhythms of rushing out the door. Today I soak in this small luxury and begin to reflect on the year. There’s a very thin layer of optimistic anticipation for the start of the 2019. But as I peel that back, I find a thick residue of the reality that I am barely limping across the finish line. While the first 11 months of the year were full of new, thrilling adventures, this final month has brought a set of challenges I did not see coming. Among them, a robbery that has left our family ransacked.

We’ve spent the month in the dregs of construction, trying to put the pieces back together and walking through the reality of terror that now grips my daughter every time we come home. This season has not been for the faint of heart and so I sit in silence on the Eve of the New Year tired, grieved by our loss, unsure as to how to move through healing and searching for what 2019 will bring. I am afraid I don’t have what it takes to keep running this race. And so I bring that to the One who can take it from me. I open my Psalm of the Day – Psalm 30 – and read “You turned my wailing into dancing. You removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy that my heart may sing your praises”. There’s my Hope; that Jesus can take my weary, grieved soul and cloth it with joy.

When layers are pulled back in you, do they reveal a tired, grief-stricken heart? Let’s pray together that God will turn those places into pure joy in the New Year!