In 2023, I had a year of drawing back, of reflection, and of many many wonderful experiences, but also of uncovering uncomfortable things.
Here are just a few:
My bitterness and anger that I carry along, ready to unleash at any time, without any sense of control over them.
My yearning for structure and discipline and the reality of my evasive, selfish, procrastinating ways.
My loneliness and my need for real connections and my tendency to turn hurt into blame and not intentionally build relationships.
The lack of depth and truth in my thoughts and actions, and the inability to give real attention to important people and tasks in my life.
Yikes.
While I learned a lot this last year, honestly, at the end of 2023, I was really fed up with the amount of energy, thoughts, and actions around ME. I was pretty sick of myself. I'm not sure how everyone around me was feeling but likely pretty similar. It turns out that when we turn inward, all of our negative thoughts and traits are amplified while we shrink.
I'm not saying that we don't need quiet and reflection and solitude but I am saying that quiet and reflection and solitude are tools to then live in this world well and it really matters what we reflect ON and then what we do next.
I don't think self help is the answer. In fact, the more I leaned into it, the more I just thought about... well, myself. And it didn't make me feel happy or fulfilled. It led me deeper into anxiety, addictive behaviours, isolation, and poor choices instead of into community, connection, and care. It made me feel trapped and defeated and shifty and distracted. There wasn't a key to be found in me to change. If anything, I have realized even more how much I require a strength outside of myself to see properly.
So what now? At 41, I feel like I've tried a lot of things. I've said a lot of things. I've proclaimed confidently on the internet about everything from motherhood to faith to fashion choices, I've made so many mistakes and yet here I am, starting the year older, less knowing, less healthy, less confident than I have ever felt before.
Sometimes God needs to take each part of my heart and lay them out in front of me so I can viscerally see how they need changed. I wish that could just happen immediately when I veer slightly left, but it seems to take a car crash every time.
That's not the legacy I hope to leave.
Our thoughts become our actions and that becomes who we are. So, here I am tracing back the paths where I left the road and cruised away, and unravelling the deceptions that got me there.
This last year, God has been dealing with the lies that I have been living in as if they are reality, the lies surrounding the story of shame and defeat that I get trapped inside, the lies of where my value comes from, the bitterness and anger that inform my reactions and make it hard to see outside myself. Some of these were developed in my thoughts from a really young age. They have to do with who I feel like I have to be, the lies I need to cover my tracks and feign my worth, and the front that automatically goes up to appear a certain way. Secondly, it's been really interesting to deal with my physical reaction and fear of of any discomfort, pain, or hardship and my immediate impulse to avoid or numb them at all costs. While this likely started after deep trauma and loss, it's now become an involuntary reaction to anything emotionally "hard."
It is only in the light of love and the reality of truth that I have been finding my way back and the way back is always through.
So that sucks.
It means I have to lay out all my thoughts and actions and the feelings and then evaluate all three in the truth of who Christ says He is and who I am in Him.
It's not a self-help book and it's not a 12-step program, unfortunately.
It's the gentle reminder to choose right now, in this moment, to pause and look to Jesus, to recognize the good, to dismiss the lies, and to go forward, to claim the promises offered to every one of us and to claim the strength that doesn't lie within us but is available through Him to each of us.
While it is sort of depressing that after years of God's direction and clearly seeing the power of the Holy Spirit, I am still only learning these lessons at age 40 and 41, it also feels like a blessing because maybe I have 40 more years left to live in grace and love, and to share the freedom that comes only in the light of truth.
It's a reminder that love is an ongoing relationship that takes time and forgiveness and that I can live in those because I've been offered them so freely. The more I read God's word, the more I see that we all screw it up. We all have our own hang-ups, and we all are offered the choice to move forward in joy and redemption, but not in our own strength.
Living well isn't some incredible act of will or discipline or feat of repentance. It's the willing offering of our attention and our heart to the right things daily, hourly, each minute, through the power of the Holy Spirit we choose to accept. It's leaning into the impulses He sends and not ignoring that still small voice.
There's this story in Luke about how Jesus shows up at his friends' place and Martha (sister #1) was running around like a mad woman trying to get dinner ready while Mary (sister #2) was just hanging out and listening to Jesus. Martha was angry about doing all the work while Mary just chilled but when she complains, Jesus said that Mary has chosen "HaTov."
In a world of a million tiny distractions that numb our hearts and turn our heads, the real answer to living a life of meaning and purpose isn't in finding ourselves... unless by that, it means in looking up and "recognizing the good" and then living as we truly are in the light of that truth.
You are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed -- or indeed only one.
Let me be known as one who, through all the busyness and distractions, stopped, set my eyes on Jesus, recognized the good and went forward.
Onward, friends.
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