Welcome 2024!
Somewhere in the busyness of the year, fall has slipped past, winter arrived, and now Christmas has also passed, and a New Year is about to dawn!
Thankfully, we are blessed to live in a time and place where there is both winter and Christmas. Unlike Narnia in CS Lewis’s book The Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe, where it was always winter and never Christmas, there is celebration at a time when we must once more begin our journey through the dark and cold days of winter. And even New Years’ is a time of celebration as we ‘ring in the New Year’ and eagerly anticipate its arrival.
Reflecting on 2023 - Your Story and Mine
2023 has been a busy year of change for me, as perhaps it has been for many of you. I think perhaps change is the one constant in life. And as I reflect on the changes this year has brought, I thought of this quote from Frederick Buechner that I recently read.
My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours. Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I, of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way […]. frederickbuechner.com/
So, while the details may be different, I pray that in the summarizing of my year, you may see reflections of your own, and that we both find cause for celebration for the year that has passed and hope for the year that lies ahead.
Well Laid Plans
As is often the case, my plans for the year were bigger and grander than my accomplishments. I often think I can do more in the time that is allotted to me than I ever actually achieve, and I find I must offer myself grace for those goals I haven’t realized. Life sometimes contains surprises that we hadn’t anticipated, and we find our well laid plans thwarted by circumstances we didn’t foresee.
Sometimes those circumstances are life changing and we find our course has completely changed direction; other times those unexpected course changes are just little bumps in the road of life that disrupt our week but haven’t really disrupted our life. And sometimes a year contains a little of both.
A Year of Change
When I think about the strange mix of good and bad, peace and despair, joy and sorrow that a year often brings, I can’t help but be reminded of the opening lines in A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us […].
A Year to 'Wait and See'
As many of you know, this year brought some major changes in my job. Earlier this spring, changes in the way the postal service evaluates and sets the pay rate for rural routes brought major adjustments to many routes including all the rural routes that serve Plainview, Hale Center, and Kress. In a nutshell, all the rural carriers in our office lost their day off and went from a five-day week to a six-day week without any increase in pay and a pay cut for some.
While I was discouraged by this change and afraid I would not have any time to write, I was reminded to ‘wait and see’ and bring what I had to the table or more literally, to my keyboard. I wrote about this in a post titled, Faith for Enough. And while I haven’t blogged as much as I would like, I haven’t posted on FB as often as I’m told I should, and I haven’t made much progress on a book I’d like to write, I have still somehow found time to write. Much of what I have written has not been published or posted, but I have brought the time I have, and the words have poured out and perhaps someday some version of them will find their way to print.
And so, while I look back on my year and lament over what I haven’t written, a look back at this post Faith for Enough has reminded me that God has still multiplied what little I had to offer. How about you? What have you brought to the year that God has multiplied?
For other posts on Pausing to Praise, including my post last month Falling Leaves and Passing Seasons, click the link below.
A Year of Grief and Healing
While this year has brought many external changes to my life including a precious red-headed grandson born in May, a teaching position at work that takes me off the route and puts me in front of a classroom one week a month, and an empty nest, it has also been a year of internal changes and a season of healing old wounds.
In the spring of 2021, with the help of Dr. Dana Taylor, a skilled counselor, I began a long, slow journey back through my past to untangle the knotted memories and wounds of my broken marriage. Almost two years later as 2023 made its debut, I found myself having to face the dark pain of truth and grieve my ungrieved past. In that season, I wrote Facing the Dark and Finding Light. This grieving of past wounds was and continues to be a hard part of the healing process.
And this grief has been the basis for some of the posts written for my More Than Mended category this year. If this has been a year of grief for you, whether the loss in your life has been the result of death or the living loss of relationship, I pray you find encouragement and comfort here.
For more posts on grief and suffering and God's presence in the midst of our pain, click on the link below.
A Year of Both/And
While each year may hold, as Dickens wrote, “a season of Darkness”, it also holds a “season of Light,”. I think we often have both “The best of times and the worst of times” all mingled together in a year. But because He Came, as I wrote in my most recent Christmas post, we can hold both sorrow and joy in the same moment and in the same season.
And as we experience both the ‘spring of hope’ and the ‘winter of despair,’ and hold both grief and gladness in this winter ‘season of darkness’, which is also a ‘season of light’, I pray we also find space for grace in our lives as we open our hearts to others this year.
A Year of Hard 'Firsts'
This year for the first time, I wrote about suicide. As many of you know, my husband committed suicide, and although more than twenty years have passed, it was, and continues to be, a topic that triggers trauma and deep wounds for our family. But writing and talking about Robby’s death has been part of my healing, and if the suicide of a friend or family member is part of your story, I hope my healing is a soothing salve for your wounded heart too.
Another first for me this year occurred last month when I was honored to be invited to speak to a class at the Second Baptist Church in Lubbock. This class had been studying the book God Is by Mallory Wyckoff, and her book is definitely on my list of top reads for the year! Apparently, each week the class has had someone introduce the chapter for that week and facilitate the discussion. With Dana’s help and encouragement, I was able to open the chapter God is Sexual Trauma Survivor by sharing part of my own story and relating to Jesus’s suffering prophesied in Isiah 53. This was definitely a first as I shared parts of my story that I have never written or shared.
A Space for Grace is where I write about hard topics. If you have missed some posts, you can find them by clicking on the link below.
A Year to Remember and a Year to Move Forward
And so, it has certainly been a year of change. It has been the best of times, and the worst of times. I have delighted in loving on my new grandson and enjoyed spending time with my sweet granddaughter, and I enjoyed one rare day this fall when my five grandchildren were all together at my house for the first time ever. I have ventured into places and positions I never planned and could not have foreseen. But I have also had to work away from home far more than I would like, and I have made baby steps in areas where I hoped to make giant strides. Although our family has continued to grow, it also continues to be fractured, and I have and continue to grieve strained relationships. I have walked through a season of darkness and grief, while healing has been a spring of hope, and I have learned to hold both grief and gladness together.
I think Dickens beautifully expressed the secret to a great truth, and his words echo those of Soloman in Ecclesiastes, “for everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to hear; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; …” And so, for every season, there is usually an opposite season that has either just passed or will soon arrive and, in many seasons, there is both. But we know we have a Savior who is present in every season and so as the New Year dawns, we can rejoice and have hope for the year ahead!