Last year, my sister and brother-in-law stayed at our place to bring in the new year, so I made a nice brunch and came up with a list of questions for us to answer so we could reflect on the past year and prepare for the one ahead. The idea was for each person to take a card with a question written on it and then for each individual to answer the question they had drawn. In the end, however, we all answered each question, finishing the “game” well after brunch in the comfort of my living room as we sipped what was left of our coffee. No one complained about how long this activity took, however. Answering these questions and getting the chance to reflect upon the year and what we anticipated in the new one together was really delightful. So delightful, in fact, that I knew I needed to keep these questions and use them again for the following year.
This year, we won’t have any special visitors on New Year’s Eve (or day), and since my husband is not a morning person, we won’t start off the day answering these questions as a family either. Still, I’ll try to make a special breakfast for my boys and ask the eldest the questions he’ll most enjoy answering. Then, I’ll find some time to personally reflect in the days to follow, thinking about these questions and reminiscing over the best moments of this past year.
As we bid farewell to this year and prepare ourselves for the one ahead, I hope the following questions can be of service to you as they have been to me. May God bless you and keep you in this coming year. And may we seek after Him more than ever! Happy New Year!
Reflection Questions:
1. What was the best thing about last year? 2. What was most challenging? 3. Where did you see growth (spiritually and otherwise)? 4. What new thing did you experience? 5. What was your favorite place to visit? 6. What was something you were happy to accomplish? 7. What was your favorite moment with family? 8. What made you most proud of your spouse, children, etc? 9. What was one of the funniest moments of the year? 10. What was your favorite song last year? 11. How would you describe the year in one word?
New Year Questions
1. What are you looking forward to this year? 2. What do you anticipate potentially being a challenge? 3. What do you hope to learn? 4. How do you hope to grow (spiritually and otherwise)? 5. What goals do you hope to accomplish? 6. How would you hope to describe this year in one word?
You crown the year with Your goodness, And Your paths drip with abundance.” Psalms 65:11 NKJV
Pictures above: birthday cupcakes for Liam’s class (with mustaches, of course), bridal shower decor, baby shower cake, CJ’s little feet, and my dress for the wedding
It has been bittersweet to bid 2023 farewell. Personally, it was such a good year. It wasn’t without its challenges and hardships, but the good outweighed the bad by far.
The first half of the year was full of celebrations. Liam had his first birthday party with friends his age early in the year, then I hosted a bridal shower for my younger sister alongside my older sister and mother the following month in Fort Worth.
The month after that, some dear friends threw me a baby shower, and exactly a week later, our baby boy decided to surprise us by making his debut, over two weeks before his due date! Although life slowed down a little bit after CJ’s birth, we still took a couple of trips to San Antonio to get Liam’s suit tailored for his role as ringbearer in my sister’s upcoming wedding, and I fretted over yet somehow managed to write a toast for my role as matron of honor.
Seven weeks after CJ was born, we traveled back to Fort Worth as a family of four and had a fabulous albeit tiring weekend celebrating my sister and her groom as they tied the knot. The biggest events were now behind us, and I was relieved that each one went so smoothly.
Since then, we have taken a trip to a nearby beach as a family, Liam started school, and we have visited JJ’s family out of town. This last year, Liam also initiated many spiritual conversations with me and prayed with me to accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior. And although I am unsure that he fully understands the gospel yet when I have later talked to him about his decision, I am so encouraged by each step toward faith that he is making.
God’s generosity overflowed into every aspect of an eventful 2023, and I’m so grateful for all of it.
In light of such a beautiful past year, it has been sad to me to begin a new one. But then I remind myself that His mercies are new every morning, and I think of God’s goodness and how it has preceded me into this year. Surely there will be challenges and hardships this year like there were in 2023, but God will be with me in them. He will teach me things through them and strengthen my faith. And He will continue to be the same generous God, deepening friendships this year, granting me new experiences, delighting me with new songs I’ll hear and special moments with Him and with family and friends. I do not have to fear the uncertainty of this new year because my future is certain in Him, and He will guide me. His love will carry me through. So, here’s to the adventure that God has for each and every one of us this 2024! May we seek to walk with Him closely this year and enjoy everything in this year that He has in store!
You crown the year with Your goodness, And Your paths drip with abundance.”
I meant to take Liam on a walk with me a few days ago, but instead I found myself sweeping up the patio and then picking up twigs in our yard as he played nearby. A windstorm had blown a bunch of tumbleweeds into our neighborhood a few days before Christmas, and although I had broken down the ones in our yard and filled several garbage bags with them on Christmas Eve, there were still a lot of remaining pieces scattered between the rocks.
The activity seemed fitting for my current mindset and mood. I’m generally excited to usher in a new year and dream about the possibilities that the next twelve months might bring, but this year has been different for me. I’ve been muddling through my normal New Year activities with little enthusiasm this time. The year that the world anxiously awaited is one that has met me with sorrow as my heart continues to ache for friends who suffered incredible losses last year.
Picking up twigs that day was a vivid reminder that, although we’ve entered a new year with hope of better days to come, we must still deal with the physical and emotional debris created by the damage of last year’s storms. We must pick up the broken pieces of our lives if we are to begin the healing process and start to move forward. In light of the aftermath of last year’s storms, perhaps we need to set aside some of our expectations over what we thought this year should be.
Recently I’ve come to realize that a year doesn’t need a whole lot of pizzazz or big celebrations to make it a good one. This year does not need to make up for “lost” time to make it worthwhile either. If the brokenhearted are able to find comfort and move toward healing this year, then it will be a good one. And if those who suffered physical, financial, or personal loss last year are able to move toward recovery in this one, then it will be a good year. But most of all, if we are able to experience God’s perfect peace in the midst of another potentially turbulent year, then I believe that we will be able to say by December that, at least personally, it was a good one.
If anything, last year clearly showed us that we cannot control our circumstances, but I hope it also clearly reminded us that God is still in control, and He can still fill our days with hope, joy, and peace in the middle of any storm. We must remember these things as we journey through these next twelve months. We must choose to remember that Jesus came to give us abundant life, and that life is dependent solely on Him and not on what any given year may bring.
As I mourn the losses from last year (and events that have already taken place this year), I find comfort in knowing that spring will come to our hearts again someday. This long season of winter won’t last forever. We may not enter into it feeling as young or as carefree as we once were, and it may not come as soon as we want or even look like what we were expecting. Nonetheless, just as the birds will sing and the flowers will bloom again, our hearts will find spring anew and delight afresh in the simple pleasures of life and God’s faithfulness throughout every season.
In the meantime, I will continue to pick up the twigs between the rocks in our yards as I delight in the sweetness of hope.
It seems that we, as citizens of the United States, decided that a worldwide pandemic was the opportunity we needed to finally make good on our New Year’s resolutions—the ones that we had failed to accomplish all the other years.
Perhaps the extra time we perceived we would have upon beginning a quarantine caused us to think this way. Or perhaps we had seen far too many movies where the Americans rose above impossible situations in heroic fashion, thus saving the day. Whatever the case may have been, people started to make goals of what they would accomplish during their time in lock-down. Some people wanted to learn a new language. Others wanted to master their kitchen skills. Others had fitness and health goals.
As I considered people’s goals in light of this globally trying time, I knew that I could only do one thing—I quickly jumped on the bandwagon, scrambling to form some goals of my own.
I couldn’t figure out which ones to set right away. I imagined, however, that I would walk out my front door come the end of the quarantine in the best shape of my life. My neighbors would naturally be impressed by how toned I had become, and my friends would be equally amazed later on when I casually mentioned all I had accomplished during the quarantine.
I called my younger sister around this time so that she could help me determine what goals to set (by now, I should have realized that fostering true humility needed to be first on my list), and as we talked for a while, she pointed something out to me.
“You realize that your life hasn’t changed that much as a result of a quarantine, don’t you?” she asked matter-of-factly.
I could feel the excitement within me begin to deflate as I seriously considered her question. I honestly hadn’t thought about that and didn’t want to. I wanted to believe that I could achieve great things in the next weeks to come. Several weeks later, however, I was thankful for her observation since the only thing I had gained from my time in quarantine was a few pounds. Keeping my sister’s words in mind helped me to feel better about my lack of achievement. It gave me a more realistic outlook on life.
As we end this month, some of us may be lamenting all that we lacked to achieve this year. 2020 may seem like a big waste due to our unmet goals and derailed plans and dreams. And although most of us are probably relieved to put the last twelve months behind us, our regret over how we responded to the events and situations of this year may be tainting the joy and excitement that could fully be ours as we enter into a new one.
This was my experience the end of 2019. After a hard year as a family, I was looking forward to a great 2020 (cue the laughter). My excitement was hampered, however, by knowing how poorly I had responded to the difficulties of the year. Nonetheless, a Bible verse led me to believe that the year had not been a waste. I started to recognize, in fact, that with God, nothing is wasted, and this year has been no exception to that.
Although we may have wasted time or failed to make the most of each moment, God is able to redeem the time. Perhaps He has been working in our lives this year in ways that we have yet to discover. Consider the following possibilities:
He has been making a treasure out of you.
By December of 2019, I came to the realization that God had been making a treasure out of me when I heard the following verse over the radio:
And the LORD has declared today that you are a people for his treasured possession, as he has promised you.”
Deuteronomy 26:18a
Hearing this verse changed my perspective about the year. It made me realize that, instead of wallowing in regret over my sinful responses, I needed to see the sin that had surfaced in my life like dross that surfaces in gold. God wanted to make me more like His Son, and if He was to do so, then He needed to draw the impurities out of me by allowing me to see them.
If you’ve come to the end of this year more aware of your own sin, then perhaps you need a change of perspective as well. Maybe you need to thank God that the dross in your life is surfacing instead of giving into regret. After all, becoming aware of impurities is part of the purification process. So, let’s trust that God is making a treasure out of us as He causes the true treasure of His Son to shine through us.
2. He has been planting seeds in you.
When I was fifteen, I begrudgingly started taking Spanish classes to fulfill the mandatory two years of a foreign language at my high school, and God started to plant seeds in my young heart as a result. He gave me an ability to learn the language with ease, and as I continued to learn, He gave me a heart for Mexico and a growing confidence that He would send me there as a missionary someday. Three years later, I got the chance to go on my first mission trip to Mexico, and a few years after that, I moved there to work as a missionary for the very first time.
Looking back at high school, I would have never guessed how significant my Spanish classes would be. God took something that seemed meaningless on day one to change the entire trajectory of my life, and I’m so very grateful.
This year may have seemed to you like day one of what Spanish class was to me. You may have begrudgingly lived through it because it became a required course for your life this year, and you’re hoping and praying that the world gets waived from a second required year. What you may have yet to realize, however, is the seeds God has been planting in your heart as a result of the lessons He’s taught you this year. Though you may not see the fruit of those seeds for months or even years to come, God has planted them, and their harvest will be bountiful. And in the beauty of the bounty, you will be able to look back at this year and recognize how significant it really was, and you will be grateful.
It takes faith to believe that something like that can come from the seed planted this year or to trust that a true treasure is being formed, but that’s the very life God calls us to live, so let’s truly have faith that, with God, nothing is wasted. We will someday fully see the work of His hands in this year.
