Rosh Hashanah

It’s Rosh Hashanah today, the Jewish New Year, time for new beginnings, apples and honey, and the blowing of the shofar, feasting and fasting.  One Jewish tradition is to empty the pockets into the river to symbolize unloading of last year’s sins.  I’ve never paid much attention to this holiday in the past, I can’t remember ever hearing much about it until this year.  But this year it resonates with me in a new way.

I’ll be spending the next few days (around my work schedule) taking an inward look at some goals and resolutions for the New Year.  I’ve been increasingly frustrated with my life this calendar year, it’s been a very difficult year with much transition and I’ve had some bouts of depression this year that were not pretty.  We bought a house, renovated it and moved, leaving my surroundings in turmoil for a while and leading me to a sense of exhaustion unlike anything I’ve ever experienced, thankfully that part has settled down.  We lost Lee to suicide at Mother’s Day, the nearby school shootings in April really grieved me.  Professionally my life has felt like it got flushed down the toilet, but at the same time I’ve really learned some interesting principles from looking back over the way I ran my last company.  I’ll do the next one differently and I’m grateful that I got the chance to take this time to get some distance and make some observations of that experience.  And then there is the pizza waitressing job, that’s had its own set of dramas and I’m really hoping that I’m learning whatever I’m supposed to be learning there and that it isn’t just the rabbit trail that it feels like.

I guess the reason the Jewish New Year appeals to me is because my calendar year has been such hell.  I’m hoping that a fresh start here in September will be enough to give me the lift I need to get back on track and see what happens between now and January first.  Can my calendar year be redeemed?  I know in my head that there is no such thing as wasted time, I believe that to be true.  Yet my calendar year feels like the wasted one, the year I took off for depression, floundering and frustration.  May God have mercy on my soul.

So my new goal is to treat Rosh Hashanah as my New Year and spend some time looking for the new vision and dream for my life, hoping God will do something interesting to redeem what has become of me.  I’ve been really grieving lately over the sense of God’s absence in my life.  I need Him desperately and I’m out of options of places to go where He allows himself to be found.  So I’ll keep looking and try not to die of thirst in this vast desert that my life has become.  I’d like to believe that I’m on the verge of something.  Lord have mercy.