When Your Year Was the Opposite of What You Imagined

Like so many of you, I love the last week of the year. Bring on all the journals and reflecting and word-picking and goal-setting. I want to celebrate what 2018 held and uncover the dreams and goals of 2019.

This last week of the year just feels so different than years prior. I couldn’t wish away this year faster if I tried.

The MVP of my entire year would be my counselor (and my dog, he’s cute), and she would tell you (me) it’s okay to feel it—to be angry, to be sad, to point out the good, and grieve the hard. I’m just looking for permission to skip over the feelings, yet I know the skipping means actually bringing the emotions with me to 2019. It serves me more to acknowledge them.

Welcome to my counseling session.

If I gave a title to my 2018 I think I would call it “Crying on Planes.” As I sat alone in my apartment in Dallas back in January, my heart ached to be settled and I wrote the word in my journal as a bit of a declaration and prayer over the months ahead. I had moved a lot, changed jobs a few times, and felt really shaken. It was time to start planting my feet on the ground again and establishing foundations in Dallas.

Settle.

I ended up visiting Dallas (right, I don’t live in Dallas anymore) at the end of this year, and I found myself looking backwards at yet another year of shakiness and change and no where close to settling. A phone call in April changed the path I thought I was walking straightly down and turned my mental safety and family upside down. I ran.

I ran back to Nashville in search of normalcy. I found some, sure. I found familiarity and family and safe places. I grieved.

I feel like I fought a battle this year and watched a lot of close friends do the same. I’m tired. For me. For them. For all of us. And the biggest battle I’ve fought has been against my own mind.

I found Lonely again in 2018, in fact I don’t think she ever really leaves me. I figure out ways to put some distance between the two of us, but this year she’s attached herself to me so tightly that I can no longer feel the difference between the two of us. I desired to settle this year and instead I fled. I survived a battle, but came home to Lonely and it’s way past time to kick her out.

I’ve had to adjust big achieving goals this year to simple, small daily ones—the tiny steps that give me a chance to feel a little bit of normalcy. I wrote this in my phone this summer:

Daily goals: 1) Get out of the bed. 2) Open your Bible. 3) Do one thing to encourage or serve someone else today. 4) Get some form of exercise.

Don’t ask my waistline, but #4 rarely happened. Let’s celebrate 3 out of 4. These things I could do. These small things felt like winning.

So, here’s what I’m doing as we get ready to rip the calendar sheet and stare down 2019: Fighting to feel. This week I’m fighting to feel it all. What hurt? What helped? Who helped? What can we celebrate? What was worse than expected? What was better than expected?

As I’ve looked over my journal and notes from the year, I can be quick to choose bitterness, because “settling” didn’t look the way I thought it would. But here’s what I know. God taught me this year what it looks like to settle into His steadiness and unwavering protection. He taught me more about suffering and empathy. He taught me more about asking Him to change me instead of my circumstances. He showed me redemption in a way I’d never seen. To settle meant one thing to me and an even better thing to Him. I choose gratitude.

So, here we leave it, 2018. I don’t want to talk about what happened with my financial goals or weight loss goals or personal achievements. I survived 2018 and for today that’s good enough. I am choosing to point out the people who made an impact on my year—the ones who showed up and would think nothing of it, but it mattered to me. And I want to let them know it mattered before this year’s over. I’m choosing to close the year with things that are life-giving—writing at a coffeeshop, taking a road trip, going on a long walk. And I’m choosing the word “settle” all over again for 2019. I want to see how God defines it for me this next year, because His definitions are always better than mine.