As the year winds down, I’m busily trying to push out a blog post about my growth and life lessons from 2023. It’s been a busy Sunday but it’s important to me to write this as a “year-in-review” instead of a looking back being published in 2024. I want to take with me what I learned and leave behind what hurt me, who hurt me, people who talked about me unfairly and incorrectly and what they said, friends who hurt me or broke off the friendship, and anything otherwise negative. I don’t want to be talking about that in 2024.
My Word of the Year for 2023 was Growth. Boy howdy, God grew me. I asked him to grow me in my faith, my relationships with Him, my family and friends, grow me in my writing, in my health, and my ability to set firm boundaries.
Hard Growth: Well, right out of that gate, two people in separate and unrelated incidents become irate towards me and had to be removed from contact. I wasn’t close to them so lesson learned and I’ve moved on. It happened the same day though and I remember telling God that He really took me seriously about this growth thing. I had to react with grace and kindness but also firmness. We’re not called to be doormats or to take any kind of abuse.
A couple more similar incidents from people I’ve either never spoken to at all or haven’t spoken to in literal decades cropped up this year too. Literally “sliding into my DMs” to spew absolutely baseless ugliness. A friend I thought would be forever cut ties with me without a word. Just literally stopped talking to me.
I really prayed about each situation and self-reflected. I sought wise counsel with my therapist and really went inside myself to determine “Did I have a role in this?” But I didn’t. I can honestly say I didn’t instigate any of these. I mean, seriously, how could I possibly be at even a modicum of fault for someone popping up from the distant-distant past to be a jerk? That would be fully on them. And fully inappropriate, I might add.
But each situation gave me great opportunities to stand up for myself and use the aforementioned grace, kindness and firmness. Standing up for myself is something I’ve struggled to do my entire life and here I asked God to grow me and He presented me with opportunities to stretch, be brave, grow and use biblical standards to do it. Was I perfect? I doubt it. I don’t have the ability to be. But I grew and I learned. I got what I asked for.
I learned that even when some people say they’ll have my back, it doesn’t mean they always will.
I learned that some friends aren’t forever, but if God removes some He surely brings amazing new friends to fill any gap left behind.
I learned that He knows what’s good for me in ways that I don’t, because He can see the big picture. He can hear conversations I’m not privy to. He’s in rooms I’m not in and hears how I’m spoken about.
He sees me and He sees what I don’t. Maybe just because a relationship was long, doesn’t mean it was always healthy for me. Sometimes when we won’t walk away from something or someone, He removes them for us. And this year, some relationships I never thought would reconcile were restored.
Of course it’s sad but you learn and the space gives you clarity. You see a person, a situation, a relationship, even yourself far more clearly when given the space and time to really look.
Good Growth: I’ve grown in my faith this year. For the past many years I’ve often been consumed by PTSD and a habit of jumping to the worst-case scenario when even a whiff of something goes wrong. I panic. I fear. I go straight to the worst and dwell in that possibility.
This year I finally was exhausted by it. I hated living that way and just couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t want to. I had dealt with it in therapy from a PTSD-therapeutic standpoint. Now I needed to deal with it spiritually.
As a believer, I wasn’t fully trusting God with everything. Panic, worry, fear are the opposite of trusting a good God who says He shouldn’t fear or worry. He reminds us He’s got us in His hands and they’re capable.
I knew this in my heart. My logical head was slow to catch on. I engaged in Soul Care, our church’s form of therapy or counseling. It was tough. It was good. I cried. We laughed. I learned and I grew.
Through scripture I learned a profound truth: We can’t always trust our feelings. “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9-10). It’s not that we shouldn’t trust our intuition and good judgement. It’s that sometimes our feelings are not telling the truth. Like when I leap to the worst possibility and sit in it and panic without any evidence that that’s actually going to happen.
What I learned to do instead is when my mind is sprinting towards fear and panic, I stop. I breathe. I pray, I look at the facts and evidence. What’s the truth about this situation? I have to speak truth into those situations. That pause to really examine the truth has been incredibly valuable and healing for me. God is sovereign. This I know. Of course I still worry and fear at times, but I reel it in much more quickly now. God is good. We can trust Him.
Growing Forward: This year has been good. So many difficult and beautiful things happened this year. My husband and I embarked on a business. My daughter just last week moved back home with her husband after a couple years away in the military. My family is healthy and happy and together. 2023 is coming to a close on an amazing note and I expect 2024 to be at least that wonderful.
Do you have a word for 2024? Mine is Peace. I didn’t choose it. It sprang into my mind one day and it was as if God put it there. After the year of having to use strong boundaries, make difficult decisions, and do all that growth, I want peace. I want to tighten up my circle more than I have already. I love who is in it: my husband, my children, my sister and a few dear friends.
I want to focus on my circle and push out the noise. The noise of social media and worrying about who likes me or who said what about me. I will remain unbothered as the clock ticks into 2024 by things that don’t really matter. I will surround myself with people who have a mutual respect, who want the best for me and pray for me just as I do for them, and dwell in that. After the past few years we’ve collectively had, peace sounds pretty great, doesn’t it? Let’s choose that.
Find your peace,
