reflections on life and 2021

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Years-in-review are some of my favorite posts to write and to read, but I was surprised to go back over my blog archive and find that I’ve only posted any kind of review for three of the last five years, and each one has looked different. The first was a meticulous month-by-month breakdown that reminds me of coming of age and how simple my life used to be as a 22-year-old newlywed, not yet wounded by traumas I couldn’t have imagined then. The next year, instead of looking backward, I wrote a forward-looking intention to live thankfully—an intention that would be tested beyond my deepest fears. Perhaps because of the rawness of those wounds, I skipped a year and then came back in 2019 with an impersonal roundup of favorite posts. And last year, silence.

In other words, I come to the end of 2021 with no real template to follow and no sure direction to go. So when Tsh Oxenreider (one of my favorite, longtime follows—her current podcast “A Drink with a Friend” is a delight) shared her list of 20 questions to ponder on New Year’s Eve, I was inspired to select a few for what will be yet another different-style year-in-review.

What was an unexpected joy in 2021?

I’d say “Clara,” because she is a joy, but that was not unexpected. So instead, my short answer is “Parenting.”

It was my first full year of parenting (if you don’t count spending all of 2020 in the trimesters of pregnancy and newbornhood). A woman on a podcast I was listening to earlier this week said something that resonated with me profoundly: “Many people view having children as constricting, but for me it is an expansion.” I was surprised, as someone who once deeply feared how having kids might limit my life, to realize how much I agreed with her. Having Clara has made the logistics of certain things more complicated and limiting, like flying across the country or even just going to the grocery store, but she has allowed me as a person to expand.

She has inspired me to examine my life and make it more of what I’d like it to be. She has reminded me that time is short and living in the past or the future is pointless, but what we do today matters. She has shown me what it is to wake up every day eager to discover and smile and live. And when she’s upset and I comfort her, it’s like I get to return to a moment in my own history where I didn’t experience that kind of compassion, and do it over.

Just the other night she saw me in tears and came over to give me a big hug and share her dear friend, Mrs. Bunny, with me. It was strangely educational for me to witness how she noticed and responded to my emotions—no hesitation, no judgment, no codependency, no trying to fix it or minimize it. Not even an awkward sense of “What do I do?” Just a hug, an open heart, and open hands.

I did not expect that both modeling for and learning from my toddler would be such a joy.

What was an unexpected obstacle?

Everyone says when you have kids you’ll “never sleep again”—a notion that I strongly take issue with, because good sleep habits start young and we are all created with a biological need for sleep. And Clara has been a fantastic sleeper ever since we got her feeding issues resolved around 3 months old.

So getting clobbered by severe insomnia (something I’ve never had in my entire life) early in 2021 was not the kind of obstacle I expected to be dealing with. It only got more complicated when it turned out to be a flashing red warning sign of my as-yet-untreated postpartum depression, because then I had to navigate around the obstacle of myself, who was living in denial and petrified of trying medication.

But if anything will make you try literally anything, it’s the torment of lying wide awake all night knowing that you do not have the luxury of taking a nap the next day. For the record, Zoloft probably saved my life and my marriage, and I’m glad I finally took it. I’m also glad that now I’m weaning off. :)

What was your biggest personal change from January to December of 2021?

“Personal” can mean a lot of things, so it’s hard to choose a direction to go with this question, but what first springs to mind is how drastically I’ve changed my approach to exercise over the past year. I’ve been a longtime cardio HIIT person, starting with Jillian Michaels’ 30-Day Shred probably ten years ago. From there I had phases of using PopSugar Fitness, FitnessBlender, Sarah’s Day programs, and many of my own plyometric cocktails, all the way up until the week before Clara was born.

When I jumped (literally) back into it at 2 months postpartum, I realized that in much more profound ways than I expected, my body wasn’t the same as it used to be. My joints and ligaments were still loose, my knee got sore, and everything in my body said “No, thank you.”

It took a few months to figure out where to go from there, but eventually I happened across an at-home weight lifting oriented Instagram account called @built.by.becky, and I signed up for her summer challenge beginning July 4th. I’ve been following her programs for six months now (the next challenge starts on Monday!) and I feel like I’ve found where my body wants to be. I’ve gained more muscle strength and cardiovascular endurance doing this than I ever did with HIIT, and it’s without all the jumping and jostling that my joints hate!

What was the best way you used your time this past year?

There are so many things I could choose to say here, from the hours I’ve spent reading stories to Clara to the naptimes I spent cultivating my flower garden to the short-but-sweet moments in the middle of the night when I prayed Numbers 6:24-26 over various members of my family. So many seemingly-unimportant activities weave together to make up the most important parts of life. Picking “the best” one is hard.

I guess I’ll say the best use of my time in 2021 has been, and really has always been, learning. It might be by asking questions, reading books, observing situations, taking riding lessons, traveling, trying-and-erring, or listening to podcasts—whatever the method, and whatever the outcome, the time isn’t wasted. I have learned about communication by communicating poorly. I’ve learned about emotions by observing Clara’s, which are (as yet) so delightfully unadulterated by fears of what people might think. I’ve learned where to find resources on Old Testament-era culture by asking one of my pastors, and I’ve learned about that topic itself by reading the books he recommended to me.

For a long time, I had a bizarre expectation of myself to just know everything. I thought I was supposed to know what to do in any given situation even if I’d never faced it before. I thought I was supposed to know the answers to all my questions without needing to ask someone else. I thought I might be looked down on if I got caught not knowing how to act, what to say, how to dress, or what I thought.

It’s been so freeing to realize that I love to learn and was made to learn, and no one is going to berate me for that.

What was the biggest thing you learned this past year?

That I can make decisions and changes without anyone else’s permission or validation.

I’ve noticed a pattern among new parents that I catch myself falling into at times: the tendency to vigorously share and re-share anything on the internet that agrees with the way I’m doing things for my kid, while also vigorously refuting or mocking or eye-rolling at anything that disagrees.

There are entire Instagram accounts, Facebook pages, blogs, and websites that have been built solely on the furious clicks, comments, and shares of insecure parents who just need someone to tell them they’re “better” for the way they’ve chosen to do things. If you’re afraid sleep training is going to ruin your attachment with your child, there are plenty of people with “Doctor” or “Consultant” in their titles that will reassure you that only evil, selfish people sleep train; if you’re on the flip side, there are plenty of people who will tell you anyone who doesn’t sleep train is actively damaging their child’s growth and development. The same kinds of dichotomies exist for how and when to introduce solids, how and when to potty train, whether or not to use sign language with your baby, using punishment vs. “gentle parenting,” and even choosing to have an only child vs. choosing to have more than one.

And it all comes down to this desperate need for someone to tell us we’re doing it right—usually by telling us someone else is doing it wrong.

I’ve learned, or rather I am learning, how silly and unnecessary this is. Children aren’t mass-produced on an assembly line in a factory, so the idea of one right way and one wrong way to do anything is absurd. As the classic Princess Bride line goes, “Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.”

I can decide what’s best for Clara without getting the input of her pediatrician or a research paper on child development or the whole Internet, because she’s the only Clara in the whole wide world, and only God knows her as well as I do. And when “what’s best” changes (because she’s not a robot—she changes), then I can change it—without having to share ten colorful infographics about why such a change was obviously right.

Parenting is where I’m realizing this most right now, but it extends far beyond. I can disagree with someone’s theology without considering them damned or needing them to change their minds. A person can vote completely opposite me and not be stupid or bad. If my husband and I get into an argument, it doesn’t mean he’s toxic or that we need to get a divorce.

We are all just people, and we’re all different. Sometimes those differences create conflict, but it doesn’t have to be codependent, egotistical conflict. We’re allowed to stand firm and secure in our own thoughts, feelings, and opinions without needing everyone else to get on board.

Here’s to a new year filled with more unexpected joys, more sleep, and learning more new things. Happy 2022!

God is here

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I’m not sure how noticeable it is in this journaling space of sorts, but I’ve been going through what feels like a massive shift in how I understand the Gospel and, really, the Bible in general over the last few years. For so long, I thought of it mostly as a guidebook through the wilderness wasteland of earthly life to the Promised Land of heaven beyond—a view that I think a lot of Christians have, and one that is easily reinforced in our churchly experiences. “Repent and be saved so that you can go to heaven when you die” has been the prevailing message of what has been called the Gospel for many recent decades.

The trouble with such a gospel is that it leaves us there in the wilderness wasteland, waiting around for death. What then is the point of life? Is it any wonder that we’re so often tempted toward either fearful legalism or lawless hedonism when we don’t know what else to do with the intervening years before our salvation is, in our mind, actually realized?

But if the whole story of the Bible informs how I understand the Gospel, then there must be so much more to it than repent, be good, and wait around to die.

In the beginning, God planted a garden paradise where His presence would dwell, and He placed His image bearers within it. They were to cultivate and keep it, and to fruitfully multiply into families of image bearers, working in partnership with a present God to push the borders of Eden wider and wider until His holy garden-temple-kingdom might envelop all Creation.

We know what happens next: Instead of working in cooperation with the plan, the bearers of God’s image rebelled against His wisdom, choosing their own instead, and were consequently banished from His presence.

All this takes place in the first three chapters of Genesis. What then is the rest of the Bible? It’s the story of God’s relentless efforts to remedy the breach and return to dwell among His people—from the wilderness tabernacle to Solomon’s temple to, finally, incarnation in Jesus Christ, Immanuel, God With Us.

He, crowned King over all Creation and then ascending to sit at God’s right hand, sent His Spirit to dwell not only with us but in us. And He has never left.

God is here.

And yet our version of the Gospel seems too often to tell us that we’re just like the intertestamental Israelites, living in a broken and oppressed society, our temple overrun by moneychangers, our God silent, and our only hope in some unknown day when the Messiah might appear or we might die, whichever comes first.

Does that sound like good news?

Contrast this dismal picture with the language of the New Covenant for Israel, described in Ezekiel 36:

Thus says the Lord GOD, “On the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited, and the waste places will be rebuilt. The desolate land will be cultivated instead of being a desolation in the sight of everyone who passes by. They will say, ‘This desolate land has become like the garden of Eden; and the waste, desolate and ruined cities are fortified and inhabited.’ Then the nations that are left round about you will know that I, the LORD, have rebuilt the ruined places and planted that which was desolate; I, the LORD, have spoke and will do it.”

Ezekiel 36:33-36

This is, importantly, a text directed at God’s people Israel, describing the New Covenant that superseded the Mosaic Covenant through the Messiah. It wasn’t written to you and me. But as adoptees into God’s family, we have been grafted into this covenant (Romans 11), and so while the specific renewal of the Holy Land isn’t directed at us or our nation, the imagery remains applicable: desolation gives way to flourishing, desertion gives way to multitudes, waste gives way to fruitfulness. Ruin gives way to Eden. Death gives way to life.

Because for those whose iniquities have been cleansed, God is here, and He is hard at work, partnering with us once more to transform a desolate world into a heavenly kingdom.

Too many of us, including myself a lot of the time, are loitering around the construction site dressed in suit jackets and pearls or collecting signatures on a petition or just sitting on the ground with our head in our hands, waiting for a rescue that has already occurred while the job that still needs doing sits undone.

Yes, it’s slow, dirty, uphill work. It’s discouraging at times to know we will not see its completion during our earthly lives. It’s curiously the richest and poorest vocation simultaneously, the loveliest and the ugliest, the biggest and the smallest; it’s both completely invisible to the untrained eye and a shimmering beacon in the black of night, a city on a hill.

And it’s so much better than whiling our lives away walking circles in the wilderness, trying to attain Pharisaical perfection or giving ourselves up to selfish depravity.

God is here. Not only with us, but in us. I wonder what might happen if we started living like it—not in a guilty or shame-based way, but by breathing deeply of His Spirit and letting His life animate us to work in partnership with the heavenly vision. As Jesus said in John 15:4-5,

“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.”

The focus is not on tirelessly pumping out fruit until we die so that God will be pleased with us, but on restfully drinking up the life offered by the Vine, with fruit—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, and their holy results as they feed the hungry souls of others—being the happy byproduct.

Advent is a beautiful season. I’m enjoying reading a Scripture and singing a hymn each day with Clara, in symbolic anticipation of the coming Christ. But I’m also firmly reminded that I’m not a B.C. Israelite waiting in a dark silence—I’m redeemed, made new, and indwelt by the Spirit of God. He is here. And because that is true, my role is to abide in Him, to bear His image, and to live as a citizen of His heavenly kingdom—both now and not yet.

just be here

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I’ve just come home from a weekend at home—which is an odd-sounding statement, now that I’ve written it, but nonetheless true. I am in my home as I type this, and yet I was at home twelve hours and two hundred miles ago as well, home in the house I grew up in and with the people who know me best.

This tension always makes me wonder if we were meant to live like this, separated from our people. For most of human history we’ve lived in tight-knit communities, from the familial clans of the patriarchs to small colonial towns. With industry and progress and technology have come a much larger world, for better or worse. Now we hardly bat an eye at the idea of living states or even continents away from our parents, maintaining our relationships almost entirely by digital means. Those of us in the suburbs often live a stone’s throw from houses full of people we’ve never met beyond a “hello” on the way to the mailbox—people whose pantries we can’t imagine borrowing from, people we’d never dream of asking to babysit our children, people who might not even answer the door if we’d locked ourselves out of our house without a phone late at night (ask me how I know).

I walk through my neighborhood and see large houses full of stuff and empty of people, divided by tall fences. I walk through my grocery store and hope I don’t see anyone I know that I might have to make small talk with. I wonder how to fix it, even as I perpetuate it. Community, generosity, hospitality—these are all such warm kingdom words, and I long for them, but still instinctively steel myself against them, because as warm as they are, they’re not safe.

Perhaps what my generation missed, with all its Do Hard Things and Radical and “You were made for more,” is that the opulent, individualistic, global Western lens through which we view concepts like “hard” and “radical” and “more” renders our interpretation utterly different from that of Christ. We tend to think only of going bigger and better, when the truly hard and radical thing to do is get smaller.

Smaller is harder. More intimate, more vulnerable, more terrifying. It’s harder to share the Good News with someone you see every day, because they will immediately measure your life against your creed. It’s harder to commit yourself to a tiny, local assembly of believers, because they will soon be elbows-deep in the muck of your life. It’s harder to serve your own immediate family faithfully day in and day out, because the very people we love the most can be hardest to love when it’s an every-minute-of-every-day demand on our energy.

I’d love to think that the most important thing for me to do is shatter the universe with wisdom shouted from a platform overlooking millions—grand and impersonal, safe from the discomfort of being known, set up on a pedestal to be admired from afar—but in the words of John the Baptist, “He must increase; I must decrease” (John 3:30).

Even Jesus modeled the power of small. The effects of His ministry were universe-shattering, of course, but the means were hardly grand. Twelve men. Just three in His closest circle. He let them watch Him, learn from Him, live with Him for three years. In the end, it was one of these men who betrayed Him, and it was the other eleven who carried His mission forward into the next two thousand years.

In our day of Twitter and virtual-everything and Church, Inc., it’s so easy to forget that every massive work of God in the Bible started small and moved slowly. He multiplied Abraham in to a nation over the course of four centuries, most of which the Israelites spent in slavery. He relentlessly pursued and tirelessly loved that nation through a thousand years of rebellion, repentance, idolatry, exile, and return. He finally sent the Messiah in the form of an embryo who would take 40 weeks to develop and be born a baby—a baby who would then take 30 years to mature into ministry. And He’s been continuing that ministry now for more than two millennia.

God is on a different timeline than I am. Even if I do the biggest, wildest things with my life, it will still be miniscule when it plays out on His stage. My 27 years, or 87 if I’m given them, can never be more than a blink when the scope is this large.

So I will just be, and I will just be here: faithful and small, loving my little circles well, knowing that God created me with limits but that when I am obedient in my limited part, He can better do His work in the infinite whole.