I don’t know about you, but these days I’m clinging desperately to anything that feels like hope. Christmas decorations up before Thanskgiving? Normally no but what the heck this year, it’s 2020 and the halls were decked. Got the shopping done early. Prayed for snow. Apparently, as I unloaded my bag of Christmas goodies at my mother-in-law’s on Christmas Day it was also the year to make every kind of Christmas goodie I’ve ever made in my life.
And then, though I usually leave the tree up until January, I’m ready to take it down already and pack Christmas away and get on with the new year (it doesn’t help that our tree is dead and my son keeps begging to have a nerf gun war in the den where the tree sits).
They say you can’t live for 3 seconds without hope. So I guess that means I’m doing whatever I need to do to survive right now.
And I know that organizing my life and figuring out what I learned this past year and how I want to move forward has at times been a helpful tool for me. But this year I can’t even fathom it.
I’ve been hearing sermons and reading instagram posts and watching online video clips where everyone seems to be talking about how to redeem this year and move on from it constructively. It all seems well and good but I don’t know. Right now, I just need to call it out.
God’s not up in heaven orchestrating bad things to come into our lives so we can evaluate what we’ve learned, make good choices and get more done for Jesus. I’ve lived this way most of my life. When I nearly died in 2015 and I spent the summer lying on a chaise lounge outside recovering while watching my toddlers run around the yard screaming, this fear paralyzed me. What did God want me to learn? What was it he seemed bent on proving to me? Why was he so silent when I wanted to just have him lecture me and get it over with?
And I know, I know, the Bible does call tough times “testing” and it’s true that God uses hard things to purify us. But never once do I see God telling me I’d better figure it out. Or that I’ve got a lesson to learn or I’ll be in big trouble.
Instead God healed my heart by speaking to me: I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.
I do believe in self-evaluation. I do believe in goal-setting. I believe in seeing a therapist to work through your crap so you can let it rest and move forward.
But I also believe that God is so much more gentle with us that we can even imagine. And that what he asks for when we are hurting is faith that he’s with us, not a spreadsheet of what we accomplished or plan to get done. Sometimes you can’t see what you’ve learned for decades after it happened. Sometimes you simply grow in fruit of the Spirit and you don’t really learn anything. Sometimes you just have a really hard season where all you “learn” is that you’re not alone, or that life goes on.
Like a mother hen snuggling her chicks under her wings – that’s what I see God doing for me right now. Gifting me with blessings I never dreamed of, like neighbors bringing goodies over after we did the same for them, or a dear new friend meeting all kinds of needs my lonely heart didn’t even know she had. Notes and hugs from my kids when I’m broken down in tears. I see him kindly prompting me toward starting some healthy rhythms as January approaches. Leading me toward himself and toward choices that will sustain me in survival mode instead of tear me down further.
The hope we have in God doesn’t come from our slaving for him. It comes from him being with us, Emmanuel, in the dark times, showing up for us like twinkle lights against the snow, and proving to us that he’s worthy of trust even when life is at its crappiest. When I rest in him and I look for the ways he’s showing up for me, gratitude spills out of me. Not a fake list of ways I’m pretending I’m okay, but true gratitude that is a sacrifice of worship.
So this year I’m not spending a lot of time evaluating myself. I don’t have the brain space for that. And I’m receiving grace for that. It’s been a horribly hard year. God knows that. There is no promise that 2021 will be better, especially for the friends and families grieving the hundreds of thousands of people who have died this year, and the loss of businesses, churches, dreams, and relationships.
I’m craving the hope of the new year more than ever but I think this year I’m going to find it in God, not in my list of things to learn and do to make myself a better person in 2021.