Sacred Pause
Before rushing into the new year and making a list of resolutions, it’s important to pause.
This sacred pause gives time to reflect: Where are you coming from? What’s behind you?
How can you ascertain where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve just been?
For me, this last year felt like a sacred pause. 2025 taught me both patience and how to plan things when I felt like my world was going to come crashing down any moment. It’s an odd way to exist – expecting life will zig when it zags. It makes it hard to inhale deeply and live in the moment. I learned to live in the moment anyway.
I had some wonderful moments. I walked by the ocean and I climbed mountains, breathing the fresh air and admiring wildlife and wildflowers. I got to visit my family, and I had family visit me. I read lots of books and worked on writing some of my own. I learned some new skills, and I taught others new skills. I spent precious moments giving healing prayers and holding space with people who were dying. I celebrated new life, accomplishments, and renewed healing with the living. I gave and received a lot of hugs.
I don’t know if I laughed every day, but I am sure that I want to laugh daily in 2026.
Not too long ago I mentioned in a blog that I wanted to find something in each day that would make it worth reliving over again if I had to. Laughter/joy makes life worth living, but sometimes that’s a tall order – so perhaps I should change it to finding “awe”. I remember having awe on the worst day of my life, even though I’m pretty sure I was too numb to laugh.
Pause – breathe – look back- look within at this very moment - and then look forward.
Where can you find awe; those moments that force an inhale, deep and lung-filling?
This morning when I looked outside after yesterday’s snowstorm brought that moment for me. The sky was blue, and the landscape was frosted white and bright. I could hear the silence and taste the fresh air from inside the warmth of my house (my walk later hurt my face, but that’s another story...not all bad as there is something reassuring about that too).
Yesterday it (the awesomeness) was snow falling. Some was falling straight down, but some seemed to be diagonal one way while simultaneously falling diagonally the opposite way. How does it do that?
The day before yesterday I watched a bald eagle soaring from over the lake as it flew above our car and headed west with purpose. I was awestruck. When I mentioned it, my daughter said, “Mom is always seeing eagles!” It’s true. I never want to miss them, so I do my best to look up.
I guess that’s the angel message: During this sacred pause, where can you find awe? And, once you start, what can you do to add awe to your daily life? It’s all around.
