Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns
If you think Jesus would have come into your home that day and not issued a strong rebuke to the head of household, you are mistaken. These words of condemnation have been haunting me for days now. They aren’t all that different than the soundtrack I play in my head on an almost-daily basis. It’s…
I am nesting. On Saturday I emptied the refrigerator. Last summer’s homemade pickles in their jars. The bread ends that seem to multiply on every shelf. The eggs. The milk. The fruit and veggies. All of it sat on the floor or the counter as I carefully removed the shelves and wiped them down with…
I’ve heard that life is like a highway. And it definitely seems like that sometimes. The pace of life swirls around me at dizzying speeds. We’re all so busy. In such a hurry. Always somewhere to be, something else to do. I’m a get-to-the-point, get-there-quick kind of girl. I don’t like to waste time on…
It’s been a full year and I can hardly believe it’s almost over. Nothing that happened this year feels incredibly momentous but I also don’t want to forget the seemingly small things. Every year is unique and contains memories that will never be repeated, not exactly. It’s a time in our lives we can never get back, and I don’t say that to lament. It is part of life. I think remembering is important, and sometimes seeing things all together is a good reminder of the things that filled our life this year.
A quick scroll through social media helps me remember and the more I think back, the more I see themes emerge. I begin to see what our priorities are, what was important to us this year.
An overview. In reverse.
December: Our son turned 9. Maybe that’s not a milestone, but every year older he gets is just evidence of how our family is enduring and thriving.
November: Phil and I ran a 5k on Thanksgiving morning. We revamped our living room and bought a furniture set for the first time in our married life. Also a new TV. We don’t have to squint to see words on the screen anymore. We redefined family for our Thanksgiving meal, and it was so memorable and lovely. A tree came down in our yard.
October: Phil ran a 5k in Philadelphia. I completed a Whole30 eating plan. I published my first co-writing project with a client. And started playing guitar in church.
September: We spent a day in Washington D.C. that we hoped would include a baseball game, but it rained the whole day. Still, we visited two museums, including the National Portrait Gallery, which was my personal highlight of the day. We hosted a Labor Day gathering at our house.
August: We saw the Cubs play in Pittsburgh. Our daughter went to a sewing camp and discovered she loved it.
July: We spent the Fourth of July in Harper’s Ferry. The kids and I traveled to Illinois to visit family. We gathered a group of friends to watch fireworks. We hosted a Kenya team reunion. The kids rocked their swimming lessons.
June: We took an epic road trip to our vacation in Florida with my family, a wonderful week of unforgettable memories, including a visit to Kennedy Space Center where we saw a space shuttle up close and personal. We took the long way home visiting friends in North Carolina and driving a portion of the Blue Ridge Parkway. I drove to the Philly suburbs to gather with other Chicken Soup for the Soul writers and to meet the publisher.
May: I turned 40. We bought a car and traded in our van. Phil threw me a small birthday party gathering. I ran with my daughter in the Girls on the Run 5k, during which it poured the whole time.
April: Phil and our daughter ran a 5K at Cowan’s Gap State Park. It was the first time we’d been back there since a visit on our fifth wedding anniversary. I got four long braids of hair cut off.
March: Our daughter turned 10. We went to our first hockey game.
February: I started running again, training for the 5k in May. I met one of my favorite authors at a local event. We watched the Olympics.
January: I started working part-time at a school.
If I was going to pick a theme for our year, it would be “improvement.” Or maybe “rebirth.” This was the first year in maybe our entire married/family life that I felt like we got to make positive choices for our family and didn’t have to settle for doing things the way they’d always been done or making choices that weren’t necessarily bad but also not necessarily good. For so many years, the choices and decisions for our family were based on survival and/or meeting our basic needs. This year, we had more freedom to choose based on what would help our family be healthy in all the ways.
From job decisions to physical achievements to conscious choices about food to vacation and travel, I felt like we had more control over our life. That’s groundbreaking when all I can sometimes remember is feeling like I’ve been carried along by circumstances and the consequences of those.
It was a year of plenty for us, a major shift for a family that has known only “enough” and often “lack.” Where previously we were surviving, this year, I sense what it means to thrive: as an individual, as a couple, as a family.
This does not, of course, discount anything else about 2018 that wasn’t good or great. There has been a lot of sadness and turmoil and the world is still a place with so much hurt. A year can be both wonderful personally and terrible globally. This is a hard dichotomy to reconcile. I think maybe I haven’t allowed myself enough engagement in others’ pain this year. More opportunity to do better in 2019.
How did your year measure up? What defines a year for you?
I’m a bit of a daydreamer. Something I’m learning about myself is how much I live inside my head, so much so that I often don’t notice things the first time. (On the flip side, I can be scarily observant, picking up on feelings and seeing needs without anything being spoken.) I can sit with myself and have entire conversations in my mind. I can imagine scenarios for every circumstance I’m facing. Sometimes I’m just replaying a movie I’ve seen or a book I’ve read, letting the images come to life inside my brain.
It is, like most attributes, a blessing and a curse. A blessing because I’m a writer, a curse because I’ve been known to zone out in conversations or while driving. Sometimes there are so many things on my mind that I can’t see what’s right in front of me.
It’s a great coping mechanism when I don’t want to face reality but when reality is ignored for too long, all kinds of problems follow. Sticking my head in the sand has left me exposed and vulnerable, even though it seems like my problems disappear. (I can’t see you; you can’t see me.)
This is why it was so important to me that I choose a word for 2018 that counteracted my natural tendencies. (It is reflected in previous words for the year like “enjoy” and “present.” But those did not really go far enough for this time in my life.)
This is what I said about the choice in January:
My word for this year was “Awake.”
“I am waking up to myself, my needs, my abilities. I am waking up to the world around me. I am waking up to the ways my upbringing was different than those in other parts of the country. I am waking up to the realities of life. I am vowing to live with my eyes open, to not turn away when what I see is too hard/messy/brutal. (And also to not turn away when it is too lovely/sparkly/beautiful. I have a problem seeing that, too.)
“I want to live this life intentionally, not drifting along waiting for something to happen to me. (This is mostly a work-related vow. I will write more about this later.) I am a daydreamer by nature and if I’m looking at you, sometimes I’m not seeing you at all. I’m living a story I’ve made up in my head or thinking about a conversation I had last year. It’s going to be hard work for me to recognize this as it’s happening and pull myself out of it to be fully engaged with the person right in front of me.”
It is now December, and I have not written a single word about this journey this year. Maybe that’s not exactly true. Maybe I have written about it in different ways.
This was a year of waking up and taking action. Of conscious choices and decisions instead of going with the circumstantial flow.
Late last year, I wrestled with the idea of going to work part time outside my house. I had gotten myself into a comfortable rhythm of writing and coffee dates and whole days of “freedom” but we were struggling financially and I was struggling emotionally more than I knew. After a gentle kick-in-the-pants by friends and husband, I started a job in January that I was nervous about at first but learned quickly was the perfect fit for me. I love it. And it has forced my eyes wide open. I still miss the “freedom” of having an entire day to myself, and I can’t keep up with the housework all the time (but this has initiated more family involvement in keeping the house clean) but overall, I am more productive and less likely to procrastinate and feeling more purposeful than I ever was staying home all day.
In May I turned 40 and I embraced it by starting a list of things I no longer wanted to say “someday” about. It’s not a bucket list nor is there a deadline to finish the list by the time I’m done with my 40s or anything like that. It’s just a way for me to catalog what’s important enough to stop dreaming about and start acting toward. On the list are races I’d like to run (more about that later), writing goals, travel destinations, and ways to express and establish my identity. It’s a working list both in the fact that it’s always under in progress and I’m continually working on something on the list. Throughout the year, I took risks on my after 40 list: playing guitar in church, doing a Whole30 eating plan, scheduling family photos taken by a professional, entering writing contests.
I released myself from counseling. This, too, needed a prompt from my therapist. We had gotten to the point where I wasn’t talking about one major struggle anymore but giving a positive report about a variety of things. At her suggestion, I considered whether I was ready to step away from these monthly appointments I’d had for almost three years, and even though it’s scary sometimes to consider whether you’re ready to tackle life without an arm of support you’ve been leaning on, I did think I was ready. I considered it my first birthday gift of the year.
I committed to running two times a week. I ran in the rain and cold and on the beach in Florida when I thought the humidity might choke me. I ran a 5K on Thanksgiving morning when temperatures were frigid, and I ran the whole thing without anyone coaching me to keep going.
I said what I was thinking, even when it didn’t come out the way I wanted. Relationships survived. (This has been and is still a major fear of mine: that expressing my opinion and thoughts will damage relationships.) One of these conversations happened on a family vacation, and I remember all the times I’ve held my tongue because I didn’t want to rock the boat. I still don’t want to rock the boat, but my opinions and needs and voice are important, even if they are the minority. Another conversation happened at church. My husband and I had been holding in months of frustration and one day it all came out and it was not exactly kind or pleasant. It was truthful and I don’t regret saying what we said, only how we said it. Most amazing to me is that we were not asked to leave nor ostracized from the group. Saying those things out loud had led to us taking more initiative to include people, and I feel like our bonds are stronger with our church family, even if it isn’t always what I want it to be.
I attended more than one prayer vigil/rally/protest. One time I was interviewed for the newspaper. I am naturally empathetic to the hurts of this world and also easily overwhelmed by the needs. So I have a tendency to feel everything to the point of being mentally paralyzed and needing to spend the day in bed crying or to bury my head in the sand and pretend everything is fine, fine, fine. Taking the news (and social media) in doses and taking action where I can makes me feel engaged with the rest of humanity. I still look away or ignore more often than I’d like. The news, the negativity, it is all still so hard to bear. But in waking up, I find that it’s often easier to make informed decisions.
I recognized that sometimes my awakening was more like that of someone who is sleep-deprived. You can be awake but not in a place of alertness, and it was in those times that saying whatever I was thinking was hurtful and damaging. Rest is a necessary counterbalance to being awake, not just in the literal sense of talking about sleep cycles.
And maybe that’s where this word is leading me for 2019. (2019? Writing that number makes me feel like time is a myth.)
As I’ve started thinking more about my word for this coming year, but I feel need to focus more on listening. On silence. Both are lacking in my life right now. Sometimes I choose a word for the year that I can predict how it will stretch me. I know what comes from silence and listening. It scares me a little. But I think I need it.
And I need to ponder it more.
I think the word is going to be “listen” and it is going to be difficult.
When I look back at the words I’ve chosen (or that have chosen me) since that first year I started, I see a progression. And growth.
2018: Awake
2017: Tender
2016: Present (Which ended up sounding a lot like my reason for choosing “awake”)
2015: Whole
2014: Enjoy
2013: Release
If you’ve never chosen a word for the year, I’d encourage you to think about it. I’m always surprised at how the word shows up in my life when I choose to focus my attention there.
And if you do choose a word, leave a comment and let me know. I’d love to hear why you chose that particular word.