New Year, Same God

I love ringing in the New Year! This is one of the first years we stayed cozied up at home and let me tell you, as an enneagram 7 (anyone else love personality profiles!?) my FOMO was in full swing! Everything feels so exciting, people resolving to be better, the promise of starting fresh. I have spent an embarrassing amount of time on social media the past 48 hours reading recaps of 2018 and hopes for 2019. I love the feeling that anything is possible and can happen!

2018 has hands down been the hardest year of my life. I lost my grandmother, I lost my aunt who raised me, some of closest friends fought unimaginable battles, my own health problems flaring up after years of no issues, and to close it out a few weeks ago I lost my precious pup. (I know some people don’t have the animal gene, but mine is strong and animals are family.) All of it written out like that and it sounds like a bad country song. Thank God I’ve still got the guy!

To say that I have handled this year gracefully would be a flat out lie. I’m sure if my life was a movie, I would be thanking The Academy in a month or so for being able to fake how together I am. I have never slept so badly, worried so constantly, or failed God with my lack of faith so fully as I did in 2018. I questioned Him almost daily. How could…? Why did you…? Why didn’t you…? What’s next? What are you trying to do? How could they…? When is it going to stop? The only good thing I did, the only thing that matters, was coming back to Him. Turning to him even in my frustration and doubt. I knew that however bad it was, without God it would be worse and that, my friends, was definitely more than I could handle on my own.

2018 was an avalanche of pain. I would finally pull up for air and the phone would vibrate with a new drama or unbelievable turn of events . I threw my hands in the air with sarcastic laughter and tears streaming down my face more than once crying out to God, “WHAT’S NEXT!?”. It’s so much easier to tell other people how to grieve or go through valleys. I’ve done it for over a decade as a ministers wife. I’ve prayed with people, begged them not to lose faith. Wait and see! The good the Bible promises He’s working together is sure to come! I truly believed it when I said it, and I still do. My whole life is really just one big miracle from childhood, but for some reason it was harder than ever to believe He was going to do it again. I preached all that to myself everyday. Every. Single. Day. of 2018 I had to consciously remake the choice to trust God when I wasn’t totally sure and definitely couldn’t see with my limited sight and wisdom that He still had it all together.

What I have learned the most in 2018 is that God is so good and so faithful. I know those truths so much deeper today than I did on this day last year. I look back on the darkest times and see His fingerprints so clearly. I have learned that joy is possible no matter how dark or bleak the situation. I have cried so much this year but I honestly don’t remember a time when laughter was so present either. I have begged for peace to come on sleepless nights and felt it settle on my soul like God himself covered me up in a cozy blanket. I’ve always prayed, but this year I learned about a constant dialogue that stops and starts on and off all day everyday. One that was raw and honest and corrective. A whole new understanding of what it means to pray without ceasing and dying to the flesh. I learned about His love for me in a more intimate way than ever before.

There is so much I still don’t understand. I know there will be more pain and heartache in my life that I won’t understand, that will feel unbearable. But I know now that I can do so much more than I ever thought through God. I’ve explored new depths of God’s strength, His mercy, His comfort, His peace, His joy, and so much more. And it’s crazy to think all of Him goes so much deeper than I’ve seen. There is still so much of God I get to discover.

I hope I can be a better wife, mom, friend, minister. I pray that my life points people to God. Most of all I’m going to strive to keep going deeper, relying more fully, and learning all there is to know about the One who never changes. The One who is always good. 2019, I’m ready for you!