Thoughts On: 2016

This year started out as a whirlwind and continued as such. It began with a job, and then a home, and then friends, and then a heart-shaking trip to Palestine. It was the first year I set manageable goals and followed through with them, and I stepped outside of my comfort zone in nearly every area of my life. It felt new and raw and fragile, and it came with its intense joys and its days of anxiety and fear. There were nights I spent curled up on my beige carpet floors, not wanting to do anything else that would require my brain to think or my muscles to move or my heart to feel.

And then there were the other moments, the ones that complicated it all and brought the deep, unsettling kind of tears. My parents sold the house I had lived in since I was nine, and I felt relieved at first. I professed hatred for that house the moment I learned of it. I hated its plainness and its simple, red shutters. I hated that my best friend no longer lived across the street. But most of all, I hated how my life changed in that house. I lost so much of what I thought I wanted while we lived there. I lost the perfect family I had dreamed up in my head. I lost my innocence. I lost my joy.

I painted my room in that home carnation-red and sunshine-gold. I freehanded Galatians 1:10 on the wall beside my bed and wrote "fresh and free and full of beauty" in cursive above my closet in forest-green. Two bookshelves reached nearly up to the ceiling, littered with old dolls and more books than I'd ever been able to read. I painted over it all at the end of 2014 in an attempt to cleanse myself from my past, but also to try to convince myself that I could cut myself off from it all. It felt chaotic and frenzied, and I needed something more pure, something simple and gentle and safe. 

I think I did the same thing with this year. I thought maybe my new job and my new apartment and my new friends would whitewash my life somehow - make it as though those blood-red, sunshine-tinted years never even existed. I thought selling the house would finalize it all, make me forget all those things that didn't go as planned. But you never get to whitewash your life. The old paint will always be beneath, and if you don't accept it, make peace with it, that old paint will poison your brand-new walls. 

So, while this year was all about new beginnings and fresh starts, it felt even more important to accept what came in the years before so as not to sabotage this new path I'm taking - one of grace and light and hope. I learned this year to stop running - to come home and breathe and make peace. I learned to settle into my life like I would settle into a favorite pair of jeans and a clean, white t-shirt. I learned to force myself to stay in one place long enough to feel, long enough to remember and mourn and cope. I wrote a poem in college for a class, and long ago I stashed it away, wanting to move on. But this week I took it out again. I hung it up on my bulletin board above my desk, coffee stains and all, because I want to remember - hating your past is no way to move on. We must embrace it all, good and bad, and this piece will always remind me of that:

I am from fairytales, from castles an candles and the early morning sky, from the misty woods where I lie awake at night. I am from the fireside, where warmth is found and hope can hide. I am from January sunlight and a room of gold and sunset red, from a dance that weaves through the air of my open window, and from a shadow which falls across my bed. I am from bare feet on dew-striped lawns, from the drifting leaves of autumn, from the summer wind on sun-kissed skin, from snowflakes and shooting stars. I am from stacks of books piled high, from melodies to which the memories arise, from the coffee shop with its cozy air and from "please don't ever go to far." I am from tightly knit dysfunction, loving whirls of skin and bones; from the tears of years without a blood-bonded friend, and the forgiving kisses of a little wet nose. I am from a place which we cannot yet know, with colors undiscovered and lands not yet shown; I am from heaven, of this I am sure: I am from God, from grace and from pure.

This year, in all its dreams and all its daring, came down to letting go of the toxic and holding onto the beauty. It's both/and - as I suppose most of life is. On to 2017 - may it be full of joy and jubilee and all the love that God tends to bring.