Dear Discouraged Ones at the End of 2023
Christmas is over, trees and decorations are being taken down and packed up, no one quite knows what day it is, and some are reflecting on 2023 and what it brought, both good and bad. Some are excited for the new year and picking their special “word” of the year that will serve as a guide and theme for their goals, intentions, and personal growth. But many are cautiously walking into 2024, afraid to hope for anything, make goals, or dream too much. Do you relate to that feeling at all? I know I have before.
When I think back to this time last year, I can’t recall a single goal I had written down for the new year. I don’t think I picked my magical “word” for the year. I didn’t have it in me to dream for much or expect much in 2023. Interestingly, 2022 started off pretty well. I was pregnant with my third baby and had the most joyful and easy pregnancy of my three. My husband and I welcomed our third son into the world on July 27th, and he was just the best baby. He slept through the night right away, didn’t cry nearly as much as my other two babies, and was just such a pleasant little guy. Even as a newly postpartum mom, life was looking good! And then my mom started coming down with symptoms that became more problematic in August and eventually led her to the ER in September. In early October, after a hysterectomy and exploratory surgery, she received an official stage IV uterine cancer diagnosis and later that month died in the ICU. I said goodbye to my 56-year-old mom while nursing my 3-month-old baby in hospital waiting rooms. Simultaneously, my older two boys had some kind of mystery vomiting sickness for 4-6 weeks, our new baby had eye problems that required meeting with specialists in a city over an hour from where we lived, the baby ended up needing eye surgery, and then the baby came down with a respiratory virus that led to him needing oxygen which caused us to cancel traveling plans for Christmas. So, the end of 2022 was full of urgent care, ER, and Children’s Hospital visits, making funeral arrangements, taking our baby to specialists, preparing a eulogy speech, and being with my family during the first set of holidays without my mom. There was no special anticipation for the new year other than to be there for my family and make it through the first year of milestones after my mom’s death while keeping things as normal as possible for my kids. So as you could imagine, I didn’t end 2022 or kick off 2023 with my typical practice of setting goals and intentions or looking ahead with much joy and excitement into the new year. I just didn’t have it in me.
Maybe you’re looking back on 2023 with more memories of unexpected hardships, losses, transitions, or disappointments than answered prayers, personal achievements, dreams coming true, or good times. Maybe the end of 2023 for you was like the end of 2022 for me, and you are not feeling encouraged to dream, look forward to anything, or plan for this upcoming year. Maybe you’re just in a place of survival or floating through time as you process all that has happened this year. And that’s okay. You don’t have to be excited for the changing of the calendar if you’re simply not. It’s okay for others to be excited and ready for 2024 and for you to continue holding space for your grief or cautious anticipation. It’s okay for you to notice the moving forward of time without feeling the need to pick yourself up by your bootstraps and enter the new year with new resolutions that maybe aren’t for you to carry during this exact moment in time.
But if I could offer some encouragement for those of you who find yourself in a dark place walking into the new year, afraid to hope again, waiting for the next shoe to drop, unable to see light at the end of this season, it’s this. God is still doing a new thing. Even when it seems dark. Even when hope seems far off. Even when it’s hard to laugh, hard to dream, hard to find the joy in anything. God is still doing a new thing.
Months before my mom knew she was sick, decades into a very long and faithful walk with the Lord in the midst of continual mistreatment, years into praying for miracles with a broken spirit, she wrote this on a chalk board in the kitchen of our family home…
Somehow in the midst of experiencing deep darkness, soul exhaustion, disappointment, unanswered prayers, and mistreatment, my mom claimed this verse as the one she wanted to meditate on, mark her home with, and set her eyes towards. She didn’t know what was coming. She didn’t know how her year would end. Regardless, she chose to trust and have faith that God was still doing a new thing even in the midst of the brokenness she was enduring. This verse still remains in her handwriting on the little black chalkboard in the house today and is the verse we chose to have carved into her headstone to mark the place where she is buried. Although my mom is no longer with us in the flesh, she left this prophetic reminder that encouraged her in her final moments on earth as she cried out to God to rescue her from the darkness that tried to encamp around her for so many years. She also left this prophetic reminder, unknowingly, for each of us in the aftermath of her death so that we could grieve not as those who have no hope, but as those with a living hope and promise because of Christ.
We may not know what the new thing is that God is going to do in this coming season. We rarely get a sneak peek into what’s ahead and have to engage in the daily walk of aligning with God’s ways as we trust in Him as the author of our lives. In talking to my mom a couple weeks before her death, she spoke of sensing that God was going to do something new and that something was shifting. She was able to share some of her specific prayers she was coming to God with leading up to her symptoms starting and how she was anticipating God’s answer to her cries for intervention. As you could probably guess, she never quite imagined that an answer to her prayers, the new thing that God was doing, would come in the form of a seemingly out-of-the-blue battle with cancer that would give her the gift of eternal abundant life through the death of her earthly body and salvation through Christ. But she trusted that God was carrying her and bringing her into newness of life even before the new thing came. And now she is living fully with Christ, as I remain here, holding onto the prophetic reminder that a new thing is springing forth as I say goodbye to 2023 and walk into all that 2024 will bring.
So if you are approaching the beginning of the new year feeling worn down with grief, heavy with disappointment, hopeless, or without the capacity to smile at the days ahead, let these words in Isaiah 43 wash over you, encourage you, and plant a seed of hope that can begin to grow and maybe even flourish in you in 2024.
Isaiah 43:16-21
“This is what the Lord says–
he who made a way through the sea,
a path through the mighty waters,
who drew out the chariots and horses,
the army and reinforcements together,
and they lay there, never to rise again,
extinguished, snuffed out like a wick:
‘For the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.”
In whatever wilderness you found yourself in this past year, in the wasteland that seemed to become your reality…
Remember that God has been faithful before, and He’ll continue to be faithful to you in the days ahead and for all of eternity to come. He IS making a way for you, although the way may end up being longer or completely different from what you originally expected. Refreshment and restoration IS coming, although it may seem distant and far off. God has promised that He IS doing a new thing. And I’m praying that you and I have eyes to perceive whatever new thing He has prepared for us in 2024.
Blessings to you all and may this new year be full of all the best new things for you and your family.
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