Onward!

It’s February—how are you doing with your New Year’s resolutions? Or maybe you decided, as I had for the past couple of years, that it was better to be realistic and not make promises you likely wouldn’t be able to keep.

We’re all familiar with the depressing statistics about how quickly most people abandon their New Year’s resolutions. And to be honest, I’ve made my fair share of contributions to that statistic. So in recent years, when January 1st came around I simply changed the calendar on my kitchen wall and left it at that.

But 2020, as we all know, was a year of a different kind. If ever there was a year for reflecting and reevaluating, this is it. And after experiencing so much forced change, there's something very appealing about putting myself in the driver’s seat and changing a few things about my life simply because I want to.

In early March of last year, just a few days before everything began to shut down, our family watched the movie Invictus, starring Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela, which tells the story of when South Africa hosted—and won—the Rugby World Cup during the challenging post-apartheid era. The title is a reference to the 1888 poem by William Ernest Henley that had sustained Mandela’s hope during his twenty-seven years in prison. l found the film inspiring, but I didn't think much about it the next day, or the day after that.

Fast forward about two weeks. The world seemed to have imploded and I was suddenly homeschooling our three children with nowhere to go, stuck in an impermeable fog that had erased everything on my future-map except Today. And it felt as though each Today was the same: blank, flat, and endless. Like driving across Nebraska when you're already tired and there are no good radio stations. Despite believing in a good and loving God and knowing how He had walked me through dark valleys before, I battled daily--and with only limited success--against anger and despair.

It was then that the final two lines of the poem “Invictus,” which had featured prominently in the film, came back to me:

“I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.”

I cannot claim to have gone through the kind of suffering described in this poem, nor do I share the author’s bleak view of what comes after this life. But I really related to those last two lines; they seemed like a life preserver God had thrown out to me, to keep me afloat in the choppy waters while He slowly pulled me back to peace.

The kids and I used “Invictus” as a recurring activity during those unforgettable first weeks of figure-it-out-as-we-go homeschooling. We learned the definitions of the harder words and wrote out the entire poem for handwriting practice. We stood up and proclaimed it with melodramatic gusto and laughed at how silly we sounded. But most importantly, we talked about how right then, in that scary and out of control time, we could claim the inner power of being the captains of our souls—no matter what happens.

My ambitious project of having them memorize and recite the poem lost steam and faded away amid the chaos that was our daily life that spring, but I’m pretty sure they will all remember those last two lines.

The word “captain” speaks to me especially strongly. If my soul is a ship, then I’m on my way to somewhere. I can navigate around things. I’m free.

There are two things that the coronavirus pandemic has made me feel over and over again: powerless and stuck in place. So this time around on January 1st, it was important for me to welcome the new year by claiming and using the power that I do have—the internal control panel where I can set and adjust my attitude. Where I can turn on the ship’s motor and start heading somewhere, be it ever so short a distance. Even someone who is literally stuck in a prison cell retains this unconquerable power of the mind.

So, take that, COVID-19. You may have closed off a lot of waterways and put up obstacles I have to work around, but you won’t keep me stuck in the harbor. I will continue to find places where there’s room to move forward. Whether it’s New Year’s resolutions, or YouTube fitness videos in the basement when I couldn’t go to the gym, or just making a decision to learn something new.

Outside of the movie The Karate Kid, I’ve never had much of an interest in martial arts. But this fall, my son wanted to take taekwondo lessons, and at the center we chose, parents can take classes with their children for free. They even offered a Zoom option. So now, here I am, kicking and punching and blocking right alongside him twice a week in our basement--and grateful for it. We hope someday we’ll earn our black belts, but even if we don’t succeed in going all the way, we’ll be stronger and more skilled than when we started.

As for my two little New Year’s resolutions, they’re nothing grand or noble, just practical things to help make everyday life work better. I was tired of getting thrown into high-stress mode when forgotten tasks pile up and surprise me, so I came up with a system (the details of which I won’t bore you with) for keeping up with what needs to be done both today and “soon.” And I was tired of feeling overwhelmed by too many choices when doing my weekly meal planning, so I resolved to incorporate more "old favorites” recipes and keep a running list of meals that our kids can eat without complaints.

Small things, to be sure. But even small steps are powerful mental-health medicine, because forward motion generates hope. And hope is what can make 2021 a better year no matter what happens with the coronavirus, U.S. politics, or my loved ones.

I do have a third, more serious New Year’s resolution in the form of a focus-word for the year, something to recall, pray for and strive toward as I press on into all of this year’s unknowns. I’ll share more about this word in a future post.

For now, I wish you the blessing of discovering those little (or not so little) pathways inviting you outward and onward, whatever previous exits may have been closed.

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Image source: Invictus keychain found on https://www.artfire.com/ext/shop/product_view/wirenwhimsy/12440152