Remembering 2014.. and So Excited for 2015!

2014 was the first year I ever had a "word".  You know, a word for the year. A word that is supposed to be the focus of or the goal for the year.  I didn't really mean to have a word, but as the new year rolled around, I sensed deeply that it was time to live again.

And so the word for 2104 was LIVE.

What do I mean by "live again"? It sounds slightly morbid, or like I went through a terrible ordeal that I needed to come back from.  It sounds... dramatic.

In truth, it's not so dramatic, it's just real.  At that point, we had been in our new house, our new town, at our new church for two years.  And it had been two years of misery for me (minus the six month honeymoon period- getting settled, unpacked, with notions in the back of my head that when all that was done, the reason why we came here would be waiting for us.)  It had been two years of tears, discouragement, despair,   I was starting to think I was depressed enough to need medication.  But then we went to Florida for three weeks and everything was perfect and I snapped right out of the despair.  So I knew it wasn't a chemical problem.

But as soon as we were back home, I was right back where I had been before.Overwhelmed. Discouraged.  Longing to escape.  Escape what? Just... life. And circumstances.  I remember asking Josh "Was I this overwhelmed in (our former home)?" because I wondered if it was just me.   But he could see it too.  Gentle as he is, his answer wasn't "Yeah, you're losing it" but he did admit he noticed I was overwhelmed and not myself.

I remember Christmas Day, trying so hard to hold my emotions together and just enjoy my family, the gifts, the time together. But there was this cloud over me that threatened to ruin every day, even the best of days.  And I had no idea how to move it.

So entering 2014, I just prayed "Lord, help me LIVE again!"  I didn't want to get up every day and sigh and say "This is my life. It will never change. Just accept it and deal with it and get through it." I didn't want to be one of those people Thoreau spoke of when he said

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

Not me!  Like George Bailey at the end of It's a Wonderful Life, I prayed 

I want to live again!

I know, it sounds so dramatic. Like a scene from a movie.  It kind of makes me snicker at myself to recount it all this way, but it's what was going on in my heart.

And I didn't know how to change things.  But the Lord did.

2014 began with a long, bitterly cold winter that just wouldn't quit.  I'm no winter-hater, but I really started to after days and days of snow so deep it literally covered our downstairs windows.  And cold so frigid we just couldn't seem to stay warm.

One Sunday morning in February, we bundled the kids up and loaded them in our truck to go to church. At the end of our road are cornfields, barren and flat in winter of course. As we made our way down the road, the wind was howling and veering our big SUV.  It was blowing snow wildly across the road in front of us.  I was cold and cranky and sick of winter and in my heart I thought bitterly:

What are we doing in this God-forsaken place?????

And in an instant, everything changed.  I know, more drama, but it's true.  In that moment, God spoke to me.  Quietly but oh-so-clearly. He said

Look at these fields! They are white for the harvest. Literally white!  Do not call forsaken what I call a harvest.

Wow.  I can't properly express what happened in my heart in that moment, aside from saying that peace and even contentment came in.  Those words from the Lord, spoken to my discouraged, bitter heart, brought me back to life.  They were an assurance, a promise, that God did, indeed, have work for us to do here. That he wasn't done with us.  That a harvest was coming.  And so much more that is still a mystery changed for me.

When I look back on 2014, I am so incredibly grateful for those words from the Lord and for the work that he, only he, could do in me.  I think of how he used the strangest things to start bringing me back to life...

A new family to our church lost their baby at 21 weeks gestation. They had to go through the labor and delivery, the dealings of death.  We went to their home the night before they had their little girl and brought pizza and it all seemed so meager, so weak.  Yet in loving on them, life came back into me.  As we drove home, I cried.  God was using us. We were making new family here at last.

We have a few relationships that are beginning to grow and deepen.

God called me to start a homeschool co-op and has given me perfect peace to let him build it and grow it and add to our numbers as he sees fit.

Our school year is going so much better.  I'm not the crazy, wits end mama I was before.

We're having a baby, a new gift from God.  How about that to LIVE again?

We went to Florida again and this time, I was so thankful and excited to come  home.

Because there is a harvest for us here.  We are sowing right now, sometimes seeds of unknown origin. What will grow of all this, we don't know.

But I look over this past year and see that God is faithful.  What he has promised, he will fulfill.

Looking at this new year that is ahead of us, I am EXCITED!  The cry of my heart is "Lord, I am so hungry and so thirsty for more! Fill me, Lord."

And I fully expect that he will do this work too!

Happy 2015!