You know what’s funny? I spent most of 2019 thinking it was already 2020!
I think it’s my aversion to odd numbers and odd years. I’m a weirdo, I know.
Every year is full of joy, sorrow, grace, forgiveness, difficulties, accomplishments, new friendships and some that you let go, laughter and tears, books you loved and some you couldn’t finish. 2019 had its fair share of all of those, didn’t it?
As we end the odd year of 2019, I spent some time reading through my journal and Instagram captions to pick out a few nuggets that I wanted to remember from this year.
Beauty can be found even when the scenery is gray, cold, and harsh.
Everyone needs a friend that’s not afraid of the rough beginning and messy middle, and who sticks around for the beautiful ending.
What’s more important? To be healed or taught and transformed?
Hope for healing and if not that, hope for whatever I can learn along the way.
Help your kids chase their dreams and keep supporting them when those dreams change. They will change like the seasons, embrace each one.
Learn to persevere in the ordinary.
God is good, all the time. Healing takes time.
The true test of perseverance comes in the midst of each season and I need the visual reminders of those seasons. It’s how God makes himself real to me.
The ability to get along well with others and considering them more important is rooted in kindness and servanthood. Sow it into the DNA of your family. Imagine the benefits that will reap into the next generation.
When you persevere through pain and surround yourself with people that love you unconditionally, healing will come.
Any type of pain is unwanted but it can be a powerful healer if we allow it. The perseverance that it takes to endure pain yields beauty in our character and exudes hope for tomorrow.
God can turn any situation into a new beginning. It may require humility, grace, forgiveness, a steady hand of endurance—or a combination of all the above. The end result? Hope.
For so many writers when the are going through hard seasons, the first things to go are what we’ve convined ourselves are a luxury. But if we let those things go, that often becomes what keeps us stuck.
If we want to get unstuck, the answer is not to let go of the things that make us feel most like ourselves but is to embrace them and move towards them in a way that might be really messy and might just be writing for ourselves only, one line a day.
We’re not saying you have to publish everything you write, but we are saying you have to keep writing the words.” Emily P. Freeman, hope*writers co-founder
Happy New Year, friends!
Let’s bring in 2020 with the thoughtfulness of some of the things we learned in 2019 and keep writing the words!