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…
Every year since 2013, I’ve picked one word that I want to focus on, a guide for the year to come. (You can see all the words I’ve chosen and reflections on those years here.) It still sounds too simple to be effective, but at the end of each year, I can testify to the changes these words have brought about in my life.
This last year might be the year that I’ve written the least about my word and its impact on me. In December of 2016, after life circumstances left my heart feeling hard and impenetrable, I chose to focus on “tender.” I needed to let in the things that hurt. I needed to feel things deeply. I wanted my heart to break in the kind of way the ground needs to be broken every spring in preparation to receive a seed that will grow up from the dirt. 
When I look back on the year, there was heartbreak, for sure, circumstances I didn’t understand. We started the year with my husband unemployed and then the transmission went out in our van. After my husband found a job, his unemployment compensation was denied and we ended up needing to fight the decision months into the new year. A project I had emotionally invested in fell through. We struggled to dig out of a financial hole, and when we desperately wanted to take steps forward on buying a home, we were denied a loan.
These things stirred up a lot of bitterness and resentment and while I would normally want to just stuff those feelings right back down, all of these disappointments were like manure spread across my heart, making the ground more fertile. (Can I put in a plug for regular appointments with a therapist or counselor? My therapist’s office became the place that my heart busted open again and again as we turned over things I thought I had buried.)
Before I chose to be more tender, I feared what would happen. I worried that cracking my heart open just a little would break me completely until I was shattered–like innumerable pieces scattered across the kitchen floor. I was cracked, yes, and I was broken, yes, but I learned that I could be pieced back together. Different. Stronger, somehow.
And having survived being broken once, I dared to let my heart break again.
It started a couple of years ago with refugees. I opened my heart. I took action. And they have changed my life. This year I took another step and started learning about racial injustice and how to be part of the reconciliation process. (Mostly I’m just learning and rethinking everything I’ve been taught.) Late this summer, my concern moved toward undocumented youth, those whose parents brought them to the United States illegally but whose entire lives have been lived here. They are fighting for a path to citizenship and I stand with them in that fight.
I ended 2017 softer than I thought possible but also stronger. My heart is not a bitter, barren place, and though there is much work to be done where justice is concerned, I am encouraged and energized by the things I’ve seen, the people I’ve met, the stands I’ve taken. Tender shoots of something green are growing in the soil of my heart again.
Where all of this will take me in 2018, I really don’t know. I have a lot to learn, and I don’t do nearly enough of the kind of work I think I ought to do where advocacy is concerned. But if 2017 was an internal decision to open myself up to caring about people and causes I hadn’t previously considered then 2018 is about getting out of my seat and standing, walking, singing, shouting, and doing more of what I see others doing. It is about sharing the tweets and opinions I’ve been too scared to share because someone might not like it. I’m not out to divide. I’m physically ill when I lose “friends” or get into arguments online (or in person).
But this year I also learned more about my personality (I’m a 9 on the Enneagram if you’re familiar) and my tendency is to keep the peace at all costs. To bury my head in the sand when the shots are flying. To engage in all kinds of diversions when I don’t want to feel one.more.thing.
That ends in 2018. (Or it lessens. Let’s be real.)
So my word for the year is “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.
So, this is me. And this is my work for the year. Awake.
What about you? Do you ever pick a word to focus on for the year? If you need some help getting started, I recommend the community over at OneWord365. (Join the Facebook group also!)
Stay tuned. It’s going to be an eyes wide open kind of year.
I love receiving Christmas cards and year-end letters from friends.
And I am terrible at sending them. I accepted this about myself years ago when the Christmas picture cards I ordered arrived too late and I sent out a handful of them and now have a dozen “extra” memories of our family from 4 years ago. I’m not some ungrateful soul and this doesn’t make me a bad friend. (My rule of friendship is basically if we’ve ever known each other for longer than a second, then we’re friends and always will be unless you decide differently.) I just can’t get myself organized enough to take family pictures and order cards and make sure we have enough stamps and envelopes and then actually write out all the addresses and such. I would need to start in July if I was going to make it happen by Christmas, and I’m just not sure that’s an option. (Let me repeat: I love that there are still people who send Christmas cards and pictures of their families, especially to us when we do not do that.)
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
This year, I sent a few cards as I felt the need and delivered one special basket of cheer. (Cookies for all the neighbors? Nope. 150 Christmas cards signed, sealed and delivered? Not a chance.) For my own self, this is the way it has to be. Again, I am in awe of those of you who spread the Christmas cheer to your neighbors, family and friends.
When the kids were littler, I enjoyed the chance to write a Christmas letter, wrapping up our year and looking ahead to the new one. I miss that. I don’t have a list to publish this year of best things I read or most meaningful moments. In the way of momentous occasions and big changes, this year was a dud.
But that’s kind of okay. We needed a year where things settled down and we settled in. To be honest, that is not how I thought this year was going to go. (Read last year’s wrap-up post and you’ll remember why.)
So, if this was our Christmas letter, arriving all sparkly and bright in your mailbox and you were reading it at the dining room table after dinner with your whole family gathered around, here is what it would say:
As far as years of our lives go, 2017 was almost uneventful. At least in the BIG NEWS sense of the word. Our biggest change was Phil starting a job at the end of the January after being unemployed for three weeks, and that happened so long ago, and the transition has been so smooth, that it almost feels like he’s been working there for years instead of approaching his first anniversary.
Okay, so there was also the transmission failure in our van during that same three-week stretch of unemployment when I thought that God might actually hate us because I felt kicked in the ribs when I was already on the ground after being punched in the face. January was a *fun* month for us.
After that, though, things settled down. We adjusted to Phil’s new work schedule (3 full-time days) and the kids did their things at school as if nothing happened. The biggest things that happened to us the rest of the year don’t seem that big on the outside, but they shifted something inside of us.
2017 became the year we spoke up for and stood with people on the margins. This was the year I started calling my elected officials and telling them what I think. It was the year I attended candlelight vigils in the city square and demonstrations in front of my representative’s office. It was the year I added my support vocally, visually and in writing to causes I had previously not considered.
(I didn’t realize this was a theme of the year until I received these two gifts from separate family members this Christmas.)
When it came time to choose an ornament for the tree that summed up our year, we had some trouble. We hadn’t taken any big vacations or really thought about it throughout the year, but when the opportunity came for us to buy this for our tree, we took it.
“Love lights a path” fits with our family and the ornament itself was made by trafficking survivors in Cambodia to benefit an organization that rescues and restores trafficking survivors in other areas of the world, so it’s doing double good.
For me, personally, it was the year I began to unstick my head from the sand. Last year I chose for my word “tender” and I have felt the bruises on my heart from caring about things and people more intentionally. I have cried and raged and shouted and lost “friends” on Facebook but I am ending the year with a heart this is softer than when the year started, and that was my ultimate goal. (More on my word for 2018 coming soon.)
The year wasn’t all activism and acclimation, though.
Phil and I took a trip to Boston in the spring and celebrated 10 years of marriage.
My daughter and I ran a 5K together.
Phil played soccer all summer. 
Our son rocked swimming lessons. Our daughter started learning to play the flute.
We visited numerous national parks, including a quick visit to Washington, D.C., in November to meet my grandmother who had flown in for the day.
This was the year I got an article published in a Chicken Soup for the Soul book. 
We tried new things like riding the bus, looking at the solar eclipse, and making new friends. As I scroll through the photos on my phone, I see things like visiting the Renaissance Faire, joining a group to visit the Islamic Center in our city, attending baseball games and concerts in the park. (We saw Arlo Guthrie live in concert!) We hosted family for a week of fun and went to Philadelphia. I went to a writing retreat and met one of my favorite authors. (FANGIRL ALERT.)
It was a year of small, seemingly insignificant moments but when I start to add them up, I can think of no other word but “full” to describe it. And that’s a very big deal when in previous years I have felt so empty.
I am sitting at my parents’ house in Illinois having twice driven through snowstorms in our short week here. The temperature is not even in the single digits (for the love of all that is holy) and I have complained all week about the northern Illinois weather I have left behind (while trying not to be jealous of my friends who are spending this week in warmer climates–love you!).
It is the second to last day of 2017 and I am worried that the weather will hinder our travel plans back to Pennsylvania or that when we get back to our farmhouse, we will find busted pipes from the colder-than-normal temperatures there or that our kitchen will be overrun with mice. (Aren’t I a pleasant person to be around?)
And yet, I end this year full of hope and possibility. This is not my default state of mind. 2018 holds promise. It won’t be easier or harder necessarily but different and new.
I’m ready.
How about you?