It’s Not My Most Exciting Word of the Year

 align

verb [ T ]

UK  

 /əˈlaɪn/ US  

to change something so that it has a correct relationship to something else

My 2025 word didn’t come to me very quickly. I had a short list of words and really was feeling more drawn to a different word (Selah). However, as I completed my 2024 reflection, I realized that (maybe inadvertently and definitely to my detriment at the time), I had really practiced Selah (a pause) in that year. However, I wasn’t pausing to reflect or to praise or to correct, I was just… paused. And I felt like it was time to fix the things that were stagnant in 2024. So another word on my short list, Align, kept coming to my spirit. 

I cannot help but feel that align is going to be… uncomfortable in the making. When your back is out of alignment it can be very painful to correct it. However, it’s also an uncomfortable and painful position to be in, so even if the practice of it brings discomfort, the relief afterward will be joyful. When your tires are out of alignment, your car drives poorly, but as soon as they fix it, the car drives perfectly again. So I guess I’m committing myself to a year of potential discomfort for the purpose of a lifetime of improved living.

I hope. That’s the idea, anyway.

I need to take this year to get things in order, to “change some things so they have a correct relationship with some other things”. And I feel like I have the tools at hand to work through that, and finally the desire, the motivation, and the understanding of the need to do so. I have a sense that this year is going to be a highly structured year, and that’s what I’ll need to hold myself to the discipline required to get better. I gave myself a lot of grace this past year, allowed myself to be held, but now it’s time to stand up and move. 

We worked a lot of puzzles this past week in West Virginia. Well, they worked a lot, I stepped in here and there to get frustrated and walk away. When I first sat down to the giant one in my picture, it was complete chaos with only part of the outer rim done. I looked around what they had done and noticed that in several places, someone had joined two pieces. Just two, not connected to the whole. I said to Kelsey that I appreciated whomever had done that because they weren’t being overwhelmed by 1000 pieces that all looked the same and were laying all over the table, they just worked till they found two that connected and started there. Then two more. Then a string of three. And eventually, those would become part of a larger picture that was forming. Over the next few days, it slowly started to come together. When we left, it was almost all done except one of the bowls. But it took the alignment of two in the beginning to get to the finished work. 

A writer I follow, Jon Acuff, has a saying from one of his books (Soundtracks, and I HIGHLY recommend it) that says, “Perfect is the enemy of done.” I get paralyzed sometimes by the enemies of done. I think if I can’t do something all the way, and immediately, I won’t do it at all. But sometimes just putting the two puzzle pieces in place… committing to improving my water intake by one full mug every day… is the impetus it takes to end up with the full puzzle completed. 

I’ll not say that I’m eager about the year ahead. It’s not very sexy, not very shiny, not very exciting, this alignment that is to come. I much prefer words from my short list like Selah and Faithful or words I keep waiting to find me like Adventure and Thrive and Bloom. However, I know that in the work there might be discomfort but in the product there is joy. So I’m committed to putting in the work.

Selah. 😜

Held.

 Held.

My 2024 word was “held”, and it was one of those years where I saw the purpose behind my word over and over and over.

The year… wasn’t awful. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t awful. 

I rang in 2024 in a hospital room in Chattanooga, sleeping in a recliner by my mom’s bed while my sister stayed home with my dad, who was also sick. And caregiving and medical things became the theme of the year. My dad had a lifechanging and lifesaving surgery (LVAD) at the end of February, and then ended up remaining in the hospital for a while, plus going back two more times after he was discharged. My mom and my sister lived in Nashville during that period and I went when I could. While my dad was there, my Grandaddy’s health was fading quickly. I tried to spend time with him when I could as well, and he did rebound for a time until he passed away at the end of the summer. Dad ended up turning a major corner and is just doing so well, his strength has come back in ways we never expected. Mom has had her health struggles this year as well, as has Kraig’s mom, some we are still working through. It’s a really strange new world, this world of aging parents, and it’s all new territory.

This was our first full year as empty nesters, and some days it’s awesome and some days it’s so sad. I do always miss my kids but I also absolutely love when they come home, plus getting to see them in their own places is so much fun. 

Angela graduated from NAPS in May and Kraig and I were able to go and see her ceremony and then fly home with her, saying goodbye to Rhode Island and trading it for Annapolis in June. Emma, Kelsey, and Nolan drove up with me to take her for I-Day and we had a good time together. It definitely made leaving her less painful for me. She survived plebe summer and then Kraig and I got to go back to see her for parents’ weekend at the end and that was a wonderful time too. We even snuck in another trip up in October for Kraig to run the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C., and his parents joined us. That was a great weekend too, since we got to see a rugby game! Angela had been home for Thanksgiving and Christmas and we have loved having her. Kelsey wrapped up freshman year at the dorm at Tech and was home for the summer, then we moved her into a cute little townhouse with 3 of her friends. She has had a great semester and is starting to get into her elementary education courses. She’s also over recruitment for her sorority and she’s big into that. Roman is halfway through his junior year at Lee and has enjoyed his observation hours and also working with kids in the aftercare. Francisco still lives across the field and works for two landscaping companies. Emma has had probably the biggest year (except maybe Angela), heading toward her college graduation with a double major in business management and HR and getting engaged in October. We are deep into the wedding planning for her and Nolan’s June wedding. 

Kraig has spent the year training. For what? Anything. He trained for a half Ironman all spring and summer, only to have it canceled due to a hurricane (the same hurricane that wreaked havoc on parts of NE TN and Virginia and NC, a historic storm). He had already done the Fall Creek Falls one. He pivoted and did the Marine Corps marathon in October and now is signed up for multiple triathlons and is planning some more marathons too. Francisco ran with him this week in WV and I think they’re planning to do some half’s this spring.

My professional year has been such a mixed bag. As far as school and teaching, the first half of 2024 was a delight and the second half was… not. 😂 I’ve struggled a lot this past semester with time management, connection, and motivation. I don’t know what’s going on but I have not enjoyed it. I’ve got some tough classes and some hard situations and I’ve let myself get in my own mind about some things and it’s made it challenging. I’m hoping that everything changes for the better next semester. We did finish one yearbook, the best one yet with the best staff and most amazing editors, then start this one (also the best one yet, also with the best staff, and also with the most amazing editors!). 

As for my travel business… wow. What a year. My goal for 2023 was to do 25% better than I did in 2022, and I don’t remember what I ended up doing it I more than met that goal. My goal for 2024 was to do 25% better than I did in 2023, and I did 62% better! I learned so much this year and really enjoyed the work. I have the best clients and hearing their happy memories of their trips when they get back is my favorite thing. I have six more years before retirement from teaching, and I hope to have travel established as a primary income by that time. More years like 2024 and I’ll be well on my way. I did have to work very hard and put a lot of time, energy, and effort into it, however. It did not happen organically. One of my specific goals was to use the phone more than email, and I definitely accomplished that. I’m pretty proud of my business year. (Which is a good thing because I would feel like a pretty big failure professionally if all I had to go on was my teaching job this year.)

I didn’t have a great year at all in regard to health and wellness, physical or mental/emotional. I honestly think I spent a lot of this year in a state of depression, which is a change from my usual anxiety, and the absolute lack of energy and motivation was tough. I didn’t walk, I didn’t hold very well to my fasting, I wasn’t committed to any kind of spiritual disciplines, and I turned to sugars for comfort. I have a lot of work to do to turn all of this around next year, but I’m going to do it.

We did a ton of traveling this year… a spring break cruise with most of my kids, visiting Angela in RI and Annapolis, Vegas, a family cruise in the summer and then a cruise for me and Kraig over fall break, Bear Paw, a travel conference in Fort Lauderdale, Key West (Dry Tortugas). We discovered the joy of weekend trips, Kraig and I did, and it’s definitely something we want to continue, I did get to check off two more national parks in Dry Tortugas and St John, USVI. Travel fills my cup and it was a great year for it.

Even in the midst of the challenging, the frustrating, the sad, the muck, and the mess ups, even when I wasn’t spending the time with Him that He deserved and desired, I can honestly say I felt “held” by the Lord this year. If I had not, I don’t know that I would be able to label this year as “not awful”. I also felt held by the ones in my life who love me. No matter what is happening in their own worlds, my parents always manage to make us feel treasured. Even in the loss of Grandaddy, it was another reminder of the ways our extended family carries in and holds each other. Even with my kids scattered across the United States (at least the eastern side), they were so good to keep us informed and involved. Kraig is the only guy I know who can commit so fully to the things he commits to and also make me feel so held. My friends, my book club, my lunch group, my students, my yearbook staff, my social media friends, my coworkers, my admin, my clients… so many people who made such a difference every single day in my life. Perhaps the most unexpected and sweetest relationships from this year have been with my hexmates, two of whom are new (either to our hex or our school). 

As a strange contrast to, or maybe it’s just a further exploration of, my 2024 word, I think my biggest area of growth this year has been learning to let some things go. I guess I have started to figure out what deserves to be held and what needs to be released. I still have a very long way to go in this area, but every time I say, “It doesn’t matter to me, whatever you want to do” about something that would have driven me crazy the year before, I have a little party in my brain. 

As I move forward into a new year, I’m feeling very settled. That’s a purposeful word choice. Often we say we are excited about the coming year. I think 2024 battered me enough that excited isn’t the word I would use, but I am settled. I’m ready. I have a plan. I’ve held on through the mountaintops and the valleys and I’m here for a new year.