It’s around this time of year that we tend to reflect on the previous 11-12 months, and I am one who loves to reflect. This year, however, the reflection I’m looking at is difficult to take in. 2019, age 23, and my first year out of college (technically 3/4 of a year, but whatever) was far from easy. In fact, I remember just before 2019 began - around this time exactly one year ago - feeling this sort of queasy uneasiness about the coming year. Like when you can feel a cold coming on, but much worse - like a cold that will last 12 times longer than usual with symptoms more intense than ever.
2019, age 23, and my first year out of college was a year of loss - losing friends, losing family, losing what I had known as normal for 18 years, losing my faith, and with that, most of myself.
Before I walked through the door of 2019, I dropped my faith somewhere along the sidewalk leading up to it. With too much in my hands and not a tight enough grip, my faith slipped right through my fingers. My first few steps in the door were shaky and unstable already. Without my foundation of faith beneath me, I relied on external forces for stability and affirmation, creating this vicious cycle of feeling insecure and weak —> trusting unfulfilling sources for confidence and strength —> lacking fulfillment —> feeling insecure and weak again. I relied on work, school, and relationships to hold me up at my weakest point in time, and as you may guess, I fell hard and I fell hard quite frequently.
Nonetheless, I’d pick myself up each time and stand up again on my shaky foundation.
By April, one third of my foundation had disintegrated when I took my last ever college final. For a while, feelings of excitement and accomplishment overpowered feelings of uncertainty about what’s next, with which most recent college grads will probably agree (right, guys?). I strengthened the foundation with a “big-girl” job as the manager of a local café in San Luis Obispo. This place practically screamed my name and I loved running after that call every day. Finally, little bits and pieces of confidence, strength, and stability returned. I may have lost the routine of school and the blessing of having my best friends as roommates, but at least now I had a job I felt passionate about and skilled at.
In May, my family received the news that my grandpa had been diagnosed with stage 4 bone cancer. Excuse my French, but all I can remember thinking was “f*ck.” 2,500 miles away and not planning to move back to Minnesota, I had no idea how I’d do this, how I’d support my family in this trial and how I’d continue to live so far after the result we all had to face - my grandpa’s passing. Our lives were forever changed on June 26th, 2019, when God called Grandpa Home. Peace followed after a time of extreme stress, anxiety, and pain, but so did grief. And we’re still there, wading through those muddy waters. Losing my grandpa was the first loss of a family member I’d been mature enough to comprehend. And it hurt like hell.
A couple months passed and again, I felt confidence, strength, and some stability return. Again, however, the foundation was unreliable. Major cracks and holes appeared in my relationship with my boyfriend at the time and I thought that with some difficult conversations and perseverance, we could patch them up. We could fill the holes and move forward in our relationship, in our plan for the future, but all of that crumbled to pieces right before my eyes and I was completely shocked. It took my breath away and for the first time in my entire life, I experienced anxiety attacks. Looking for something familiar and comforting to grab a hold of, I drove to my favorite beach sunset spot and as I looked out at the water, at the waves crashing on the shore and rolling back out to sea, I felt my throat tighten, heartbeat race, mind lose control. To feel such overpowering fear in my most comforting place, it was the worst.
All I could think about in the days following was how out of place I felt - so far away from my best friends and my grieving family as I grieved on my own there in the place I was too stubborn and too in love with to leave. Maybe I needed to leave, though. Maybe I needed to pack up and move to Paris and eat croissants and drink French wine all day everyday. No. Maybe I needed to move to New York and bustle my way through the city and work my buns off for my dream job. No. Maybe I just needed to move… home. Minnesota. Where family is. Where I can focus on them and me and just be okay again. So I did and here I am. I made the best decision of my life, and the hardest at the same time.
Okay, one more thing.
Maggie, our pup’s 16th birthday was around the corner when I arrived. Speaking of corners, she could barely see them and she could barely hear us call her name. We knew, as we did with my grandpa, that her time was approaching, but we shoved those thoughts out of our minds and pulled her closer instead. Less than three weeks later, Mom, Dad, and I became her care-takers after what we think was a stroke - she just wasn’t the Maggie we knew anymore. As a family, we decided it was time we put her down. Anyone who has ever had to put their beloved little pup down knows that it’s damn near impossible. We couldn’t remember or imagine life in our house without her, but we had to figure it out, and we’re still doing that.
Now that I’ve just dumped a heavy load of sadness on you…
Let me share with you some of the things I’ve learned. I’ll just flip back through 286 journal pages and… oh, here they are:
Faith. I have nothing in this life if I don’t have my faith. I still have many questions, but I know that they are part of maintaining this strong relationship with God and continuing to grow stronger. I needed to almost lose my faith, to watch it start slipping through my fingers and to try to walk along without it, to learn how to tighten my grip simply because I need to. Because trying to lead myself through days and weeks and months, the easy and the tough, becomes exhausting and confusing. Because I trust that God wants better and has better planned for me, and that I all I need to do is allow Him to do so. Because I can’t think of any better way to show my love for a God who has done so much for me than to love and trust Him.
Friends and family. I can group these two together because I’m blessed to have family I’m so close with they feel like friends, and friends I’m so close with they feel like family. The hard-to-swallow truth is that losing friends and family isn’t going to stop anytime soon. With life and age, family members pass. With separation and jobs and spouses and whatnot, friends become distant. Relationships change, no matter how much we try to maintain them as they are in any moment. What we can find comfort in are tight-knit friendships and relationships - even though these inevitably due to various factors, true friends and family will (as cheesy as it may sound) stick together through the worst of times.
Moving and settling. My heart was in two places when I left California - right there on the beach in my college town and right here in snowy Minnesota where my family is. A torn heart only begins to describe the feeling in my chest when Dad and I drove away for the last time. I’ve settled in here in Minnesota and I really truly honestly am whole-heartedly happy here now. With only a few friends (besides Mom and Dad - my best friends) around, I’ve spent plenty of time alone, in my own head, listening to my own thoughts and my own heart. That, most of the time, is what I do best and how I feel my best. I couldn’t be more of an introvert at heart, and I’m incredibly thankful that moving here has given me an opportunity to tune back into that part of myself.
So, now what? Now, I know that with God I can handle quite a load. I know that more change will come - more gains and more losses - so I’d better buckle up now and get ready. Most importantly, I understand the value of taking in each moment with gratitude, finding peace in every situation, and holding on tightly to what I cherish most.
If you’re feeling the weight of loss, know that it won’t be this heavy forever. Find rest and comfort in giving this weight to Christ, who has already accepted the load when he was crucified for us. Wake up each day and remind yourself to focus on the have’s, not the have-not’s - you’ll come to realize that the former will far outweigh the latter. What can you be grateful for today? What can you look forward to today? Who can you lean on and uplift? Prioritizing these will help bring more positivity into each day, shifting the focus from what you don’t have to what you are blessed with and what you have to give to others.
“But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”
