Grace
Every year for the past 3 years, I’ve chosen a word for the year and at the end of the year, I’ve spent time reflecting on what that word has meant to me over the past 3 months. Maybe it’s like a prayer, that by speaking that word over my year, it is conjured up in my life. Or maybe by speaking that word over my year, I simply begin seeing it more all around me.
This year, I picked the word “grace,” and I thought it primarily be evidenced as something I would learn how to offer, but instead I learned I mostly needed it myself. I needed grace for my mistakes, grace for my failures, grace for not being where I thought I’d be, and mostly grace in the changing: grace to become someone different than I thought I’d be.
An Introduction
“At this point next year, when you look back, what will you be jacked about, that you got done?”
As I’m sitting and writing this, the three 30-and-40-something men at the table next to me are talking about their upcoming year’s goals—things like getting engaged or buying houses or opening new branches. They’re very white collar, with literal popped sweater collars and clean-cut haircuts. In my head, they’re the opposite of everything I’ve become: they’re clean, successful, confident—and it’s easy for feelings of insufficiency to creep in like a squirrel in the attic (that’s another story from 2019).
But I’m also sitting at a bar that didn’t exist last year, and I’m reminded how much can change in 12 months. I don’t have to be accomplished, or at least accomplished by anyone else’s standards. I don’t have to have a list of things I’ve done or bought or ways I’ve grown up. That’s okay.
What I do have a story of how I’ve changed.
Often change starts with learning and ends with growing and so my story begins with learning a little more about who I am.
One thing I’ve learned this year is that I like plants. For years, a series of dead African violets drove me to believe I was a bad plant mom. I told myself that was my identity. I believed it. I was simply destined to be a plant killer.
Then one day a coworker passed my desk, saw my air plants (which I have painstakingly kept alive for two years) and spoke the words: “you’re a good plant mom.” No one had ever told me that—let alone meant it. I wanted her words to be true. And so I began to believe them. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t kill any more plants this year, but I also now own about 13 plants and most of them are happy. I’ve learned how to care for them well (thanks, Art Terrarium) and it’s become something more beautiful and peaceful than stressful.
One things I’ve learned from being a plant mom is that plants need pruning. Maybe this is obvious for an experienced plant caretaker, but it’s taken me a while to get used to it. I feel harsh when I cut pieces off my plants, especially if they’re not dead, just overgrown. I feel like I’m killing a part of the plant—because I am.
That’s what I’ve learned this year: plants need pruning and so do I. Sometimes I want to hang onto those dead leaves or overgrown places and sometimes the dead spots must be trimmed by someone else when I cannot do it for myself. Sometimes the overgrown places must be pried out of my white-knuckled hands so that I can grow.
Part 1: Things I’ve lost this year
In every regard, this year went exactly the opposite of how I’d hoped and planned and dreamed. I thought the year would end with a ring and a new adventure. I clenched tightly to that dream, to the point where I was suffocated with anxiety and forced, by tear-filled weeks and last resorts, to let go. Once I let go of that dream and that direction, I had no idea where I was going. I felt lost, directionless, broken, sad—completely unanchored.
I lost my best friend, my dreams, an entire friend group, my small group. Everything was torn apart in a day, when my life was deeply pruned. It’s not what I would’ve chosen and I would be lying if I said it wasn’t extremely painful, like a leaf being torn off a plant, like everything I’d built for years crumbling beneath me.
What a time to rebuild.
The thing about rebuilding is it first requires demolition. Things must be torn down before they can be rebuilt. I’m not who I thought I was a year ago, and that is largely because of what was torn down and what was rebuilt in its stead.
One of my new 2019 tattoos says “rebuild” and another is of open hands. It’s a reminder to hold my hands open and not clench what I cannot control. (That’s the pruning.) But this week I read an Instagram post (I can’t recall whose—so sorry!) about holding your hands open to possibilities. I’d never thought about my open hands that way. I’d always thought about holding my hands open to loosen my grip on what isn’t meant for me. I’d always thought of open hands in terms of losing and trusting. I’d always thought of open hands as a scary or painful thing. I’d never thought of being able to hold my hands open so that I can accept rather than let go.
The same hands that dreams fell out of: they are now opened to newness and wholeness and dreaming again.
There are also things I’ve gained:
I tried to write this section as paragraphs that flowed beautifully, but after 4 re-writes, it still worked best as bullet points. Upon retrospection, I think it’s because I learned and changed so much. Usually I have one big overarching lesson for the year, but this year I have over half a dozen. In a year where I’ve cried more than any other year in my life (like deep ugly sobbing), that’s a freaking victory.
If you hate reading lists, the gist is: I’m happy and healthy now. If you’d like the details, keep reading.
1. My mental health
While my life was stripped to the core last spring, the rebuilding started long before then. I found my therapist in early winter and she’s been my weekly and now bi-weekly companion for the past 11 months. I would not have survived this past year without her support.
2. my physical health and my relationship with my body
About the same time, I began dancing again, once a week, at my now-friend Mari’s hip-hop classes. I’d been previously told that my emotions were too much, that they were a burden, unwanted, unwelcome—or welcome only in small doses. But then I found this thing—dancing—where emotions are like a superpower. If you can emotionally connect with a song, then your movement is only all the more powerful. It was a healthy outlet, a life-saver. It helped me find myself again. But when those classes ended, I was again adrift, hating most workouts, but knowing that moving my body is good for my heart.
So I began looking. Through Looking for Lovely (thanks, Kassie!), I learned about Zumba classes and through some googling and a coworker’s recommendation, I found both a gym and a studio. Between the two, I’ve been dancing four times a week most weeks. I want to learn more next year, and maybe find an adult hip-hop class again. Through dancing, my body and emotions have become allies instead of enemies and that is one of my greatest victories of the year.
3. healthy relationships
I’ve also found new friends and reclaimed old friends that I didn’t lose after all. My friend and roommate Sara saw me at my worst and stayed—and not just because she lives with me. She walked with me through the worst days of my life. I can guarantee you I wasn’t a fun friend or even a good friend for months, but she chose to see me not as my pain but as my personhood—so she stayed. I’m insanely grateful; some days her words and hugs kept me afloat when everything else was caving in. Through the past 6 months, my other 4 roommates have become my friends, too, and my home has become a safe and beautiful place.
Because I lost so many relationships, I’ve been able to start over with choosing my friends, and that’s brought freedom and clarity. For most of my life, I’ve simply landed in friendships without much intentionality in choosing them or in setting boundaries; but I don’t want comfortable haphazard relationships. I want life-giving ones, ones that challenge me on a creative level and on a human level. I intentionally made new friends and reconnected with old ones and I’ve learned it’s okay if my circle is small. It is small right now. I’ve learned that people have to earn your trust and the right to be in your story and hear your story. That’s not mean—it’s wise.
4. my home
A few months ago I decided to shift my perspective. I’d always viewed my home as a temporary landing place and my life right now as a temporary stage until I move into some grand career and beautiful relationship and more permanent home. But that didn’t happen at all. And through that disappointment, I realized that if I don’t appreciate what’s in front of me now, I’ll spend literally my entire life discontent and looking at the greener grass and at other hills and longing for things in a different tense—when all I have is this present tense in my open hands. So I chose new words for the past few months: lean in—savor.
I bought new bedding and I’m working on making my home feel like a home. As I mentioned, I’ve been working to become better friends with my roommates and I’m viewing this season of living with several amazing women as a gift, as something temporary in a beautiful way. I know now that if I miss this because I’m longing for something else, I’ll never get it back.
5. my job
I took a 9-to-5 (well, 10-to-6) and I’m happy about it. It’s provided me income stability, it’s allowed me to afford therapy and the dentist. I love my coworkers. It’s not where I thought I’d be in any imagining, but if I release myself from the expectations of my former self, I genuinely enjoy the life I’m living.
I learned I like old fashioned’s and I drank whiskey in Memphis—on a work trip. Sometimes you learn that stability is beautiful, but you’re also given adventure because God knows it’s good and necessary for your wandering soul. I’ve seen both gifts through my job this year.
6. my words
One of the biggest things I regained in 2019 was my voice and my words. My anxiety had so numbed my ability to feel or write and it wasn’t until loss capsized me that I found my voice again in the waves.
I wrote poems and prayers and stories, for myself, to God, to process my pain and growth. And I wrote the bravest letter and chased the biggest dreams and perhaps I’ll never get a reply, but I’m learning to live without regrets or perhaps. I found my words and I found my strength and I found my bravery—all within my pen.
7. REST and hobbies
For the first time in years, I took a proper rest—it was only 2.5 days, but it’s more than I’ve gotten in ages. I sat in the woods and drank coffee and drank wine and wrote and read and fought the feeling that I should be DOING something. Sometimes it’s okay just to be.
Having a more traditional job and consistent income has afforded me the privilege of rest and hobbies and aspects of my life that have been neglected for the past decade. I’ve begun drawing and painting and knitting again and you probably won’t see much of those online, and that’s okay. Perhaps it’s even good, to release my creativity from the need to perform or to be seen or to drum up income. Perhaps just being is enough. Perhaps my just being, in the woods, in my home, in my life—perhaps it’s enough.
Through the past year, I’ve learned I desperately need nature and I need silence and I freaking need rest and I need to build a life that’s not all hustle. I need both breaks and breakthroughs. Breakthroughs come through pain and breaks come through intentional rest and I’m learning to handle both with grace. There’s grace for peaceful slowing down and grace for messy growing up and perhaps I did learn my word of the year after all (just never in the way I thought).
Things I’ve learned this year:
I’m constantly learning and unlearning and growing and changing and collecting good versions of my past self to continue on the journey with me and pruning dead versions of lost selves to let go of and leave behind. I’m learning I am strong and I am brave, two words that were left with me on the hardest day.
I’ve learned I’m stronger than I thought I could ever be. I lived through a season of anxiety and tears and while my life isn’t perfect or fully free of those things, I am most definitely more happy than sad, and in that, I am thriving. My life is incredibly different than I imagined last January, but it’s so good. Sometimes pruning is necessary. It always hurts. It always provides opportunities for growth.
I’ve learned growth is a choice. It’s often the harder and more painful choice, but on the other side, I can tell you it’s worth it. I can tell you that it gets better.
There’s a Dawes song playing now, over the voices of the three men discussing their years. The song goes:
“And now the only piece of advice that continues to help is anyone that’s making anything new only breaks something else. When my time comes, oh oh oh. When my time comes…”
When my time comes, I hope I will welcome it with open hands and a grateful heart—ready for both letting go and being filled, the pruning and the rebuilding.
Things I’m leaning into for 2020: an epilogue
As I mentioned 2000 words ago, I usually pick a word for the new year. Oftentimes I buy a Giving Key to go along with it and wear that word on that key as a reminder of who I want to grow into. I begin the year with a long post about my hopes and dreams and end with an even longer one about how I have seen them conjured up in my life.
Honestly? That’s a lot of pressure.
I feel like I have to learn and grow in a certain way and sometimes that’s not how life works. Sometimes the branch we think is going to flower is the one that becomes pruned and sometimes what we thought we were gaining is what we have to lose. Growth is difficult to predict because it often comes through unexpected problems and heartache—and how are you to predict that?
So the words that have come to me for this next season are only these two: this matters.
Whatever it looks like. Whatever it feels like. However I grow or change—or don’t—at whatever speed I do it at. It matters. Not in a way that is full of heaviness and legalism: like, this matters so you better pick the right path and never mess up and always be perfect. No. It means the opposite. It’s more like: this matters, so it’s okay if all you did today was laundry and rest. This matters, even when you feel small or insignificant. This matters, even when its not epic. This matters, even when it doesn’t look cool on social media. Small things matter. Small moments matter. Small people matter. You matter. I matter. Even in our smallness of days and moments. I’m not wasting my life even when my life is full of small things. They matter. I matter. This matters.
All I want to do is remember my value and your value and each day’s value and each word’s value, as I walk across the days that will become 2020. All those small moments, I want to embrace them with risk and beauty and intention, even if they are small and quiet and unexpected. They matter. This matters. I will walk on those words.
If you need those words, they’re yours, too. Let’s lean in and savor this new decade: this matters.