The year 2024 has begun! I actually enjoy New Year’s Day. I do not like the typical American celebrations: parties and drinking, but I really like the time to contemplate and reflect on the past year and also to consider and dream of the year to come. I’m not big on resolutions, I usually pray over a discipline or a specific word-something to work on in the upcoming year and examine how hopefully the previous year I grew in a specific discipline or word from the previous year. Sort of like a focus word for the year.

2023 the word was wait. At the beginning of the year I felt pretty confident actually. ”Okay Lord, teach me about waiting this year.” I probably even said it with some excitement, dare I even say cockiness, in my tone. I’m a pretty patient person, how hard could this be? I knew there were certainly some things I was waiting for, so I figured okay, I’ll be patient for those and God will teach me about waiting. By December 31st, 2023…I guess you could say I was fully humbled. Reflecting back on 2023 had little to no excitement or cockiness, but a sort of soberness and humility.

I felt like the Psalmist many times as he cried out in anguish, my soul thirsts for you as in a dry and weary land (Psalm 63:1), my bones are troubled (Psalm 6:2), anguish has found me out (Psalm 119:143). There was sickness-Josh was given a month off work to try and figure out why he was so sick. We took a 17 year old girl into our home completely unexpectedly this summer and I loved her with every ounce in me and when I ran empty God kept pouring. We lost a friend to suicide and wrestled with seeing another widow and children left behind. We had difficulties in ministry, trials personally and familial. I felt painfully and deeply alone many times in 2023. And many times I honestly felt like all God was saying was, “wait, just wait.” I could not give in to full despair even then, because He was still there, even then. 

I think about with my own kids, the word, “wait” is the worst of 3 possible answers. They want me to say yes or at least if I am going to say no just say it so they can deal with it and move on, but wait. Wait is hard for us, I think particularly in America. We don’t have to wait for anything!! Or waiting to us means 3 minutes in the drive thru because they were short staffed. 

This past year God taught me to wait on Him. I know I have only scratched the surface, but I can’t imagine this past year any other way. He took me to depths I never wanted to go and never would have chosen…ever. In some ways I felt like He wounded me and let me be wounded, a lot. But the glory that comes after the waiting is marvelous. He never failed one single time to bring all the comfort I needed every time I felt pain. He never failed to lift my eyes to gaze into His every time I was discouraged and my head hung low. He never failed to hold me and catch my tears even when some of them were tears of anger. Our marriage is stronger than ever and our little family of 5 has seen a God who cares so deeply that He would sanctify and purify us through the fire. Yes, He certainly is a God who is with us in the fire and the God who puts us in the fire to refine us. 

We would cry out and throw our hands up and say, “Lord, we don’t know what to do!!” And He would say, “wait.” So, we fixed our blurry, tear filled eyes back on Him and waited in trust, reminding ourselves every single time that He has always been faithful, remembering what He brought us through before and reminding ourselves and each other, “He’s never failed before and He won’t fail this time. He will be faithful again.”

There’s a song by Kings Porch that we have really enjoyed listening to this past year, it is called Faithful Still. The Chorus of the song says,

You are faithful still
You have carried me through deeper waters
Walked beside me through the fire
Faithful still
You have have closed the mouth of bigger lions
Conquered even greater giants
Gone before me and You always will
You are faithful still

The closing of 2023 and the beginning of 2024 literally feels like a chapter closing and a new one beginning for us. And I am sure this year will hold plenty of challenges and tears and pain just like last year, but I am even more confident than ever that He is faithful still. 

At the end of 2023 I can truly say, I wouldn’t change 1 part of it. The pain and the sorrows, the tears and the loneliness, by God’s grace, it all brought me to a deeper understanding of who God is and an even deeper knowledge of how desperately I need Him. So, whatever is behind you and whatever lies ahead for you, there is no other way, no other hope in facing it all except with Jesus Christ as your personal Savior.

There is 1 God and He is the Creator, He made man and woman perfectly in a perfect world. Man and woman sinned and since then we have all sinned and are separated from God. God is holy and cannot join with sin. Man cannot be good enough, we are separated from God. But God chose to send His one and only Son and those who put their faith in Him and believe that Jesus was the perfect, sinless sacrifice for their own sin, dying a murderers death as a Man who never did wrong. He took on our wrong then rose from the dead 3 days later defeating death and hell and made a way for those who trust in Him to be with Him forever in Heaven. There is no other way, there is no other hope.