Tag: 2020

Tumbleweeds

Colleen James13 Comments

I meant to take Liam on a walk with me a few days ago, but instead I found myself sweeping up the patio and then picking up twigs in our yard as he played nearby. A windstorm had blown a bunch of tumbleweeds into our neighborhood a few days before Christmas, and although I had broken down the ones in our yard and filled several garbage bags with them on Christmas Eve, there were still a lot of remaining pieces scattered between the rocks.

The activity seemed fitting for my current mindset and mood. I’m generally excited to usher in a new year and dream about the possibilities that the next twelve months might bring, but this year has been different for me. I’ve been muddling through my normal New Year activities with little enthusiasm this time. The year that the world anxiously awaited is one that has met me with sorrow as my heart continues to ache for friends who suffered incredible losses last year.

Picking up twigs that day was a vivid reminder that, although we’ve entered a new year with hope of better days to come, we must still deal with the physical and emotional debris created by the damage of last year’s storms. We must pick up the broken pieces of our lives if we are to begin the healing process and start to move forward. In light of the aftermath of last year’s storms, perhaps we need to set aside some of our expectations over what we thought this year should be.

Recently I’ve come to realize that a year doesn’t need a whole lot of pizzazz or big celebrations to make it a good one. This year does not need to make up for “lost” time to make it worthwhile either. If the brokenhearted are able to find comfort and move toward healing this year, then it will be a good one. And if those who suffered physical, financial, or personal loss last year are able to move toward recovery in this one, then it will be a good year. But most of all, if we are able to experience God’s perfect peace in the midst of another potentially turbulent year, then I believe that we will be able to say by December that, at least personally, it was a good one.

If anything, last year clearly showed us that we cannot control our circumstances, but I hope it also clearly reminded us that God is still in control, and He can still fill our days with hope, joy, and peace in the middle of any storm. We must remember these things as we journey through these next twelve months. We must choose to remember that Jesus came to give us abundant life, and that life is dependent solely on Him and not on what any given year may bring.

As I mourn the losses from last year (and events that have already taken place this year), I find comfort in knowing that spring will come to our hearts again someday. This long season of winter won’t last forever. We may not enter into it feeling as young or as carefree as we once were, and it may not come as soon as we want or even look like what we were expecting. Nonetheless, just as the birds will sing and the flowers will bloom again, our hearts will find spring anew and delight afresh in the simple pleasures of life and God’s faithfulness throughout every season.

In the meantime, I will continue to pick up the twigs between the rocks in our yards as I delight in the sweetness of hope.

With God, Nothing is Wasted

Colleen James7 Comments

It seems that we, as citizens of the United States, decided that a worldwide pandemic was the opportunity we needed to finally make good on our New Year’s resolutions—the ones that we had failed to accomplish all the other years.

Perhaps the extra time we perceived we would have upon beginning a quarantine caused us to think this way. Or perhaps we had seen far too many movies where the Americans rose above impossible situations in heroic fashion, thus saving the day. Whatever the case may have been, people started to make goals of what they would accomplish during their time in lock-down. Some people wanted to learn a new language. Others wanted to master their kitchen skills. Others had fitness and health goals.

As I considered people’s goals in light of this globally trying time, I knew that I could only do one thing—I quickly jumped on the bandwagon, scrambling to form some goals of my own.

I couldn’t figure out which ones to set right away. I imagined, however, that I would walk out my front door come the end of the quarantine in the best shape of my life. My neighbors would naturally be impressed by how toned I had become, and my friends would be equally amazed later on when I casually mentioned all I had accomplished during the quarantine.

I called my younger sister around this time so that she could help me determine what goals to set (by now, I should have realized that fostering true humility needed to be first on my list), and as we talked for a while, she pointed something out to me.

“You realize that your life hasn’t changed that much as a result of a quarantine, don’t you?” she asked matter-of-factly.

I could feel the excitement within me begin to deflate as I seriously considered her question. I honestly hadn’t thought about that and didn’t want to. I wanted to believe that I could achieve great things in the next weeks to come. Several weeks later, however, I was thankful for her observation since the only thing I had gained from my time in quarantine was a few pounds. Keeping my sister’s words in mind helped me to feel better about my lack of achievement. It gave me a more realistic outlook on life.

As we end this month, some of us may be lamenting all that we lacked to achieve this year. 2020 may seem like a big waste due to our unmet goals and derailed plans and dreams. And although most of us are probably relieved to put the last twelve months behind us, our regret over how we responded to the events and situations of this year may be tainting the joy and excitement that could fully be ours as we enter into a new one.

This was my experience the end of 2019. After a hard year as a family, I was looking forward to a great 2020 (cue the laughter). My excitement was hampered, however, by knowing how poorly I had responded to the difficulties of the year. Nonetheless, a Bible verse led me to believe that the year had not been a waste. I started to recognize, in fact, that with God, nothing is wasted, and this year has been no exception to that.

Although we may have wasted time or failed to make the most of each moment, God is able to redeem the time. Perhaps He has been working in our lives this year in ways that we have yet to discover. Consider the following possibilities:

  1. He has been making a treasure out of you.

By December of 2019, I came to the realization that God had been making a treasure out of me when I heard the following verse over the radio:

And the LORD has declared today that you are a people for his treasured possession, as he has promised you.”

Deuteronomy 26:18a

Hearing this verse changed my perspective about the year. It made me realize that, instead of wallowing in regret over my sinful responses, I needed to see the sin that had surfaced in my life like dross that surfaces in gold. God wanted to make me more like His Son, and if He was to do so, then He needed to draw the impurities out of me by allowing me to see them.

If you’ve come to the end of this year more aware of your own sin, then perhaps you need a change of perspective as well. Maybe you need to thank God that the dross in your life is surfacing instead of giving into regret. After all, becoming aware of impurities is part of the purification process. So, let’s trust that God is making a treasure out of us as He causes the true treasure of His Son to shine through us.

2. He has been planting seeds in you.

When I was fifteen, I begrudgingly started taking Spanish classes to fulfill the mandatory two years of a foreign language at my high school, and God started to plant seeds in my young heart as a result. He gave me an ability to learn the language with ease, and as I continued to learn, He gave me a heart for Mexico and a growing confidence that He would send me there as a missionary someday. Three years later, I got the chance to go on my first mission trip to Mexico, and a few years after that, I moved there to work as a missionary for the very first time.

Looking back at high school, I would have never guessed how significant my Spanish classes would be. God took something that seemed meaningless on day one to change the entire trajectory of my life, and I’m so very grateful.

This year may have seemed to you like day one of what Spanish class was to me. You may have begrudgingly lived through it because it became a required course for your life this year, and you’re hoping and praying that the world gets waived from a second required year. What you may have yet to realize, however, is the seeds God has been planting in your heart as a result of the lessons He’s taught you this year. Though you may not see the fruit of those seeds for months or even years to come, God has planted them, and their harvest will be bountiful. And in the beauty of the bounty, you will be able to look back at this year and recognize how significant it really was, and you will be grateful.

It takes faith to believe that something like that can come from the seed planted this year or to trust that a true treasure is being formed, but that’s the very life God calls us to live, so let’s truly have faith that, with God, nothing is wasted. We will someday fully see the work of His hands in this year.

Watering Seeds

Colleen JamesLeave a comment

There’s a statement going around on Facebook that says

“May the tears you cried in 2019 water the seeds you’re planting for 2020.”

-yesimadiva.com

I like this meme a lot, because I know a lot of people that shed tears in 2019, and this statement reminds me that those tears were not in vain.

As a seed must die to give birth to life, it is my prayer that those who experienced death in one way or another this year will also experience new life, and that the new life sprouting up before them would bring forth hope for a better future.

For as we know,

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.”

Psalms 30:5

Our weeping has without a doubt endured for a night. Now may our morning come!