Hello and Happy New Year,
I have heard so many people talk about how much they love this week; as I said once before, we should call this week The Week of Appropriately Low Expectations. It’s restful; it’s slow; it is a bit confusing as to which day it is. Last week we had a visit from my dad, and now we are in Indiana enjoying a visit with my in-laws. David saw a friend who he’s known since he was seven years old. Blessed holidays.
The Part Where There’s an Essay: The Year of Our Lord 2022
(an expansion of our Christmas letter this year)
In January 2022, we had five children still living at home. In January 2023, Lord willing, we will have two under our roof. It was a year in which middle age seemed to descend like a thunderclap, not only with the sudden emptying of our nest but also with the goodbye to Kelly’s mom, who passed away in February 2022.
Amidst the difficulties were glimpses of light -- a new job for me; a promotion for my husband; a graduation and a baptism; two kids moving out on their own. Recitals, test scores, performances, new jobs, and accomplishments. Faithful friends, joyful evenings spent around the fire, books, and conversation. New blooms in the garden. Letters in the mailbox.
The changes for me this year have been more invasive than in years past. My identity changed notably, from a full-time homeschooler of three to a part-time working, part-time homeschooler of one. My husband went on sabbatical from the elder board at our church, removing another role we’d become used to. Ways I’d identified myself in the past started to disappear.
These changes are jarring, but they are healthy at the same time. We naturally seek out safety in places we don’t really have it. These titles and identities we give ourselves are seasonal at best. They are temporary.
It has been a year in which I’ve grasped the message of Ecclesiastes more fully:
What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man. I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. (Ecclesiastes 3:9-14)
As the year draws to a close, we find ourselves striving to welcome the discomfort of all the changes. It is the fool who attempts to resist time, thinking she will be the first to outsmart it, to find out what God has done. It is the wise woman who opens her arms to time, letting it make of her what it will. For time brings with it the joys alongside the griefs; they are sisters. When we resist the sorrow, we forfeit the joy.
For the Anglophiles
This is your reminder that one of the warmest, kindest, most soothing television shows is on its way back to American TV. All Creatures Great and Small returns to PBS Masterpiece on January 8.
Reads & Listens of the Week
Here’s a lovely tribute to the 1994 Little Women film and one real-life Marmee. “…it wasn’t until I was a grown woman that I started to understand why the story meant so much to my mother. …For my mom, Little Women was all about Marmee.”
It seemed like this article was everywhere the week before Christmas, but in case you missed it: There is No Mary Problem in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
This was beautiful and brilliant: Christmas Hope and the Scouring of the Shire. “Christmas hope is that in Christ’s coming, he more than fixes what is broken. He restores things we did not know we had lost and replaces our desires for earthly things with the promised fulfillment of heavenly ones.”
For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning. - TS Eliot