Resolve to trust in God, hold on to each moment

By Dr. Heather Bozant Witcher, Young Adults

2020. It still seems surreal. A new decade, a new year that holds promise and expectation.

I’m not one to do new year’s resolutions. Promising to make X number of changes seems like an excellent start to the year. But, so many people fall short due to the unrealistic aspect of their resolution. Instead, each year, I look forward to what the future holds. Certainly, that involves change and, hopefully, life improvement.

This year, the new year seemed different. Perhaps it’s because we had just recently come home from a hospital stay. Seeing the children’s hospital decorated for Christmas, with what seemed like hundreds of Christmas trees and Santa Clauses rounding each corner, brought home the fragility of each year.

We never know what the future will bring. We don’t often like to be reminded of the fragility of life – the blink-and-you-miss-it quality of certain aspects of our lives and the sudden awareness that we, after all, are not in control of life.

My sons were hospitalized for probes and discussions of weight gain. We were only there briefly, but in the rooms adjacent to ours, it was clear that many families had settled in and had begun calling the hospital room home.

At the end of the hall was a large, floor-to-ceiling window. As I went to grab a nurse one morning, I noticed a small boy – maybe 5 years old – in his wheelchair staring out into the world, the morning light illuminating the paleness of his face.

Throughout the day, I saw the same boy wheel himself over to the window and sit, just watching – and possibly hoping for his release home in the near future.

In those moments especially, I’ve contemplated the contradictory state of childhood: it holds so much promise yet seems – particularly in these early months – so precarious.

In a lot of ways, it can be the perfect metaphor for a new year. We anticipate the coming year, eager to make change, to resolve to do better and make improvement, and yet – in the end – we can only do so much. Our lives are not our own.

It’s a phrase I heard in the homily over Christmas. As we listen to the story of Jesus’ birth, we realize quite quickly that Mary and Joseph did not plan for the angel Gabriel.

We know from the familiar story of the nativity that a stable was most likely not the place that the new parents had anticipated for the birth of their son. But they weren’t in control; God was and is.

This year, as I hope for health and continued happiness and as I look at my sons advancing each day toward rolling over and crawling, I remain in awe of life and its tenacity, despite its fragility.

In 2020, with the dawn of a new decade, my resolution – if I must make one – is to hold on to each moment, knowing how quickly they pass and trusting in the plan that God has made for me and my new family.

Heather Bozant Witcher can be reached at [email protected]org.