2022 - An Incredible Year of Change

What an extraordinary year this has been. A year of endings and beginnings. A year where fervent prayers have been answered. A year of stories, miracles, and quiet, deep, steadfast, love. 

Indeed I am awash with gratefulness as this year ends. 

For the first seven months of this year, besides doing much Storytelling virtually and in person, I had the privilege of continuing as a hospice chaplain. I worked with the most caring, competent, genuinely lovely professional team imaginable. We were the Home Hospice Team of BridgingLife Hospice in Westminster, Maryland consisting of nurses, social workers, aides, and chaplains who went into people's homes to care for the dying and their families. 

I gathered incredible stories of families' care, sacrifice, and often humor as they midwifed a love one into eternity. Those memories keep washing over my mind bringing a moment of deep reflection, sometimes a wave of sadness, often a smile or a chuckle. 

The hospice experience taught me to be open to talking about death with strangers. 

The holidays can be a dismal time for those who are grieving a recent death or the anniversary of one. They hide their pain as the world around them celebrates. 

Sometimes they are relieved to share their sorrow. 

On Christmas Eve I was at an upmarket supermarket picking up a Yule Log for my brother's feast the next day. A store employee helped me with with the brutish automatic checkout station. 

It turned out that early the next morning he was starting a seventeen hour drive to see his mother. 

I have no idea why I told him that I'd been a hospice chaplain but once I did a look of relief came over his face. He said - "so I can tell you. I am going home to see my mother but also to say goodbye to my father who is on home hospice care."

And there among the Christmas carbs and hurry scurry of festive preparations he told me his story and shared his feelings. Two strangers connecting in an under-the- mask, heart to heart way. Just for a moment. But it is up there with one of my lasting memories of the season. All thanks to hospice training. 

I regretfully left hospice to joyfully plunge back into full time Storytelling. And to prepare my home and my heart to marry the truest, kindest, most loving and lovable man - an answer to decades of prayer. The biggest personal ending and beginning imaginable. 

There was one huge ending that rocked the world and had a huge impact on so many of our lives. The death of our beloved Queen Elizabeth ll after 70 years of impeccable, selfless service. Then the beginning of a new Royal era with the ascension of Charles 111. God bless the Queen, and long live the King. 

In other far less significant endings. My beloved Subaru Outback became far to friendly with a deer in Kentucky and their head on collision resulted in my new to me late model, bells and whistles filled version. 

My computer reached the end of its working days and has just been replaced with a new version that can do the most incredible, unimaginable things that bring joy to my technology-loving husband's heart!

So many changes great and small. 

So many things to learn. 

So much adapting needed. 

It has been a year of years. Life changing. 

The second act has ended in the play of my life. 

The third act begins. 

This New Years Eve , as I share my traditional end of year post and poem, I know that even though the future is uncertain - I am a freelance Storyteller after all - it will be undergirded with love. 

May that be true for you also in the coming year. 

My annual reflection:

"In the dark, uncertain days at the end of 1939 after Britain had declared war on Germany, King George V1 quoted this poem in his Christmas speech to the Empire. (It was taken from a longer work called "God Knows" penned by an academic turned missionary, Minnie Louise Haskins in 1908. More recently, the words were spoken at the Queen Mother's funeral in 2002.)

"And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:

"Give me a light, that I may tread safely into the unknown!"

And he replied:

"Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.

That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way"

In this coming year, through the loving power of the Ancient of Days, may hurting hearts be healed.  May long-awaited promises be fulfilled.  May hope push out despair.  May we dance often, and with passion. And may new doors of heart-soaring opportunity be flung open for all of us.  Amen!"