At some point after making my social media accounts, I got into a habit of posting a review of the past year’s most significant events every New Year’s Eve at midnight. It’s been a year or two since my last one, and that feels wrong. You can make fun of me if you want, but there’s something about having things in lists that makes me happy, especially when the list is a list of happy things, and something in the act of writing that list is incredibly cathartic.
I think I stopped posting these at a certain point because they felt self-centered and I wasn’t sure anyone but me cared about them. But even if that were true, that wouldn’t make the joy of reading it years later any less valuable to me. Year-in-review posts are as much (or more) about writing them as they are about reading them. So here goes, because I don’t really care if this makes anyone happy besides myself, though of course if you’re reading it, I hope you share a smile with me.
Last year I…
… learned how to make Russian blini (crepes)…
… actually met my goal of writing more regularly…
… bought a zoo membership…
… wrote a million letters of recommendation for the fabulous high schoolers I coached during my stint with College Possible (that number being only a slight exaggeration)…
… learned how to crack the ACT…
… brought two new kitty boys into our home to torment our first baby, Pippin…
… was hired to work as a college campus minister with Christian Student Fellowship…
… moved out of a tiny, malodorous apartment into an actual house…
… finally gave in to the cat-lady instinct and started an instagram account just for my feline family members…
… swam in a river on the fourth of July…
… spent a lovely, very humid few days in Branson Missouri over the week of my birthday…
… where I kicked Zac’s butt in our unofficial minigolf championship, despite his uncanny ability to score holes-in-one under the most desperate of circumstances…
… turned 23…
… was very surprised when my sister and friends orchestrated a surprise birthday celebration for me…
… celebrated a year of marriage with the best husband and friend ever…
… made Zac a birthday cake with crispy-fruity-rice bark topping…
… took Zac to Nebraska Furniture Mart for his first time (if that sounds boring I have two words for you: spinny chairs)…
… made my first pot roast…
… bought a full-size Christmas tree and many other delightfully festive things…
… learned how to let go when my rambunctious cats got into said Christmas tree…
… incubated and gave birth to our precious baby boy, Salem…
… marathoned the entire director’s cut trilogy of the Lord of the Rings with my husband and our newborn son (teach ’em young)…
… received the gift of a beautiful gold-plated rose from Zac for Christmas…
… and a bunch of other little things that made last year truly the best year ever.
So many things about 2020 were ridiculously hard, and I’m not just talking about the things that came standard to all of us last year, like lockdowns and elections and just being a person. At times life felt deeply painful for me and for my family as we wrestled with each other, with ourselves, with God–but it would be shortsighted to say that the hard things were bad.
If anything, the difficulties of 2020 only made me more confident in the God who never wastes a single moment, a single tear, whether they be painful or happy. And more often than not it’s the hard labors that produce the best gifts.
Cheers to 2021; may it be a year of challenging truth, persistent prayer, determined love, and foolhardy courage.
No comments:
Post a Comment