2018 has been ... something. It's been beautiful, it's been hard, it's been scary, it's been rewarding, it's been a year of questions and hope and fulfillment and grace and mercy and uncertainty and insecurity. And based on my fb feed, it's been a similar sort of year of contradictions for everyone I know.
In some really important ways that I don't want to detail here, it's been a year of reconciliation and healing, reconciliation and healing that I'm not sure the second parties were even aware of, but I certainly was and I needed it. God has been so present and offered a balm to my heart that had been broken by some people really close to me. He also used Brene Brown's book, Braving the Wilderness, to show me that I was probably as responsible for some of those hurts as the other parties were. So this year has also brought some accountability to my own spirit and some much-needed correction by my Father.
My word this year was "one". I wrote this post last January as the Lord crystallized what He was calling me to over 2018 and it certainly was a year of "one".
I'm ashamed to say it publicly, but I spent more time in His Word and with Him (THE One) than I ever have in my adult life and it still wasn't as much as it should have been. However, new mercies and all, and I get to take 2019 to try and build on what we started together in 2018. And I will.
I was probably most successful with "one" in regard to my immediate family. The first six months together, which happened to be the end of 2017, were very much just blindly finding our way. In 2018, I have been able to really focus individually on each one of my six. I was able to be more intentional with them, we did the Love Languages test and figured out how to best love one another in the way each person wanted to be loved rather than the way that we most want to love.
Time with my extended family looked different this year, as my dad faced a pretty significant and extended health crisis. It was hard to walk through that with him and my mom, struggling to stay confident and full of faith for them when my own heart was so scared of losing him. It was really the first time in my adult life that I have faced the mortality of my parents or Kraig's and it's not something I am ready for, I realized. However, God was faithful and He has allowed all of us more time.
I had planned to spend the year collecting my previous writing and, I'm also ashamed to admit, it's one of the only things I have ever stuck to with such commitment. The second portion of that intention, though, was to write regularly and I failed pretty miserably at that. Again, new mercies. 2019. ;)
I had planned to see things as "day one" and not "one day", to focus on the right now. What I did not expect at all (do we ever?) was my own health scare, an event that forced me to live for over a month as if I only had this ONE day, because I didn't know what tomorrow held. A cancer scare prompted by a finding on my first ever mammogram that led to a second mammogram, an ultrasound, and then a biopsy meant that for one month, I lived with a huge and silent fear (I only told about three people about it). However, the most beautiful word in the English language, benign, was the final report (followed by "6 month follow-up", but I'm living in the moment, not a scary future).
I don't know that I would say I learned more about myself this year, but I think I finally accepted many things about myself this year. I decided that I was going to focus on some self-care this year. Not self-care like getting massages or going on great trips (2019? hello?), but knowing what I need in order to be at my best for everyone else and then making that happen. I made time alone a priority. I made sleep and increased water intake and decreased sugar intake priorities. I rediscovered my insatiable thirst for reading from my youth and read like a fiend this year. I leaned on certain friends and I allowed myself to pull away from others.
My professional life in 2018 is not one I will remember with great joy, but I believe that God is at work there as well. My fall 2018 Holocaust Literature class truly saved me this semester. I believe with all my heart that God placed each student in that class because He knew exactly what I would need from them and it was provided.
Mostly, I will see 2018 as a year of growth, and with growth often comes struggle and discomfort. My family grew up and we grew together. My marriage grew stronger. My faith grew intensity. My outside relationships grew discernment. My heart grew fortitude. It wasn't necessarily easy to grow all of those things this year, but it was necessary. I am thankful to leave this 2018 and to take with me all that it gave me, as well as to leave it unencumbered by some of the things it took away. God is good and we are blessed.
