I guess that's natural for the last day of the year, to think about those things. Blessedly, he couldn't think of one really tragic or one really outstanding thing that marked our 2012, for better or for worse.
God kept us this year, that is for sure.
But I kept thinking about it for awhile after the dishes were percolating in the dishwasher and the counters were wiped clean.
I count ourselves especially blessed that no one we know and love closely was hurt or killed this year. I count ourselves especially blessed that we have a unique and beautiful family, a nurturing home, sufficient employment, meaningful work, friends, and good health. And we both lost weight this year... that should count for something!
But when I think about this year now closed, I have distinct discouragements and distinct elations, and the more I think about them, the more I realize their interdependency on one another.
My most distinct discouragement of the year past was early in the year - January/February/March. I really, really struggled through those months. We were really broke - the reality of my decision to quit my secular job, work part-time at church, and be Mom was a painful reality once all the extra money had run out and we were living tight. I was so afraid. Leah and Susie were enrolled in a private school, and the school was also struggling financially. I think I picked up a lot of fear from that situation as well, as every week it seemed there was a dire report from the school, more cuts to the budget, early re-enrollment decisions to be made, our own "bleak" financial situation... and nothing I tried to do to fix the situation was working. I was so afraid. Always afraid. Living afraid is no way to live.
It's a long story, but God has a unique way of fixing things we can't fix once we finally let him be in charge.
My most distinct elation is two-fold, and both are directly related to this bad time we went through of being very broke and very scared.
1. We changed schools. It was a day or two after I had returned home from Nashville in the spring... long after we had NOT enrolled in open enrollment at our previous school... and I was torn between just re-enrolling where we were and hoping/praying for a financial miracle, and finding somewhere else to school. Homeschooling would not be right for us. Our local public school made me cry when I went to Kindergarten Roundup - I knew I could not send my girls there, I just couldn't. It felt wrong. But we couldn't afford the place we were, and I didn't feel ok about any other option I knew of. So I was on my way home from the grocery store when I felt super-compelled to stop at another public school in the next town over. I walked in the office... just to "see"... and waited for that familiar "this is not right" feeling to hit me. Took a few minutes of chatting with the secretary before I realized I didn't feel the not-right feeling... instead, I felt the overwhelming benevolence of the right feeling. I started to cry, in the office, in front of the secretary and the principal, because God had finally led me to the right place for us. So much relief. So much fear washed away. The secretary hugged me and got me kleenex. Our principal gave me a tour right then and answered all my questions - without an appointment. He introduced me to our teachers - in the middle of classes. He let us come back the next day with the girls to play on the playground, explore the classrooms and look at books in the media center. My girls thought they had hit the jackpot, baby. And the truth is, they had. We had to apply to attend this school, as it's not our residential district, and there was a waiting list, but that didn't really bother me. I knew it was God's provision. It was what I didn't even know I was looking for in a school. It made our old, failing, expensive, sequestered private school pale in comparison. It was what God had in mind, instead of what I had in mind. Sometime mid-summer, while leaving the water park, we got the phone call that we were placed at our school-of-choice and had made it off the waiting list. :-)
Not having the burden of private school tuition fixed the financial strain we were under. We can afford our life this way. And I can't even begin to explain how excellent our school is for us. I am incredibly impressed by the quality of our educators and administrators. I am thrilled with the growth I've seen in the girls. I love the environment of our school. I feel we are safe at our school. Our school has great leadership... Godly leadership... and it is real.
But if we had not had the bleakness of the broke season - broke finances, broke school - of early 2012, we would not have been driven to find a better solution to a hopeless situation. We would not have looked for a new school if we could have afforded the old school. Our philosophies of parenting and education would not have been challenged. We would not have sought God's will because our will would have worked just fine. So you see, the elation of our new and wonderful school is an elation because of the discouragement of the old and the broken situation.
2. My second part of the biggest elation came in November - I received word from LifeWay, the publishing house of the Southern Baptist Convention, that an article I had written and submitted to them in September had be selected for publication in their HomeLife magazine, May 2013. This is my first ever piece to be officially published. Contracts are signed that name me "hereafter referred to as Writer" with a dollar amount assigned to an officially titled article with a specific word count... and an IRS form, to boot. :-) What is the article about? How God worked in our lives through my job change and our subsequent broke-ness, of course. If we had not had the bleakness, the fear, of the broke season, I would not have had any article to write... no testimony to share about how God has worked in our lives... no miracle of being a "Writer"... no evidence of the sustaining power of God.
Do you see the point I'm trying to make in all of this? My biggest elations of this past year have been DIRECTLY resultant from my most distinct discouragements. My worst time played right into my best time. God fully - FULLY - redeemed the broken pain of our broke-ness of last winter into a thriving season of grace and joy!
Friend, you can trust him. It doesn't mean you won't have to go through your own bad time... it just means that on the other side of that bad time, if you trust him, there will be an unimaginatively good thing waiting for you. Sometimes you have to walk through the valleys and shadows, but know this:
The Lord is my shepherd...
I shall not want...
he makes me lie down in green pastures...
he leads me beside still waters...
he restores my soul.
That's what God did for me in 2012... he really, truly, wholly, restored my soul.
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