ONE PART OF THE YEAR IN REVIEW

I love change, fresh starts, and new years. I love big projects, lists, and forced vacations. It isn’t as much the new calendar year as the week between Christmas and New Years Day that is usually so slow that my brain has a chance to process, evaluate, and begin to hope.

Most of 2022 was survival. If we survived, it was a good day. There were great moments, true blessings, and wonderful friends; but it’s kind of hard to convey true solo parent/widow parent life. Sometimes I want to tell married parents, or even those divorced with functioning exes, think of the responsibilities in your life and double them. Everyone’s situation is different, but many of miss the quarantine life of 2020 and 2021. If you thought it was hard to be home with your children while working, being responsible for work and home at the same time, consider yourself blessed. We are always the only one responsible for all the things, but at least all the things were in the same place.

Last year as the world “returned to normal,” the schedule almost got so impossible it was laughable, but thanks to friends, we made it every time.

Honestly, this year is not starting any better, schedule wise. There is a reason two parent families succeed at such higher rates. Work travel can be fun when you are getting away from responsibilities that someone else picks up. It isn’t when you still have every one of those responsibilities, but you have to do them from a distance.

I’ve never minded social media, because I’ve never thought the photos represented the person’s whole life. But I”ve realized, not everyone puts the snapshot of one moment into context. Maybe if we want to use technology to share our lives with others, we are going to have to return to using words.

These six paragraphs are not a complete picture either. Like a photograph, the capture the feelings of the moment, but more than a photograph, they reflect a large part of our “return to normal” experiences. But the whole story would be a book full of nuggets of beauty, blessings, adventures, achievements, growth, and fellowship. BOTH/AND. If you think God wants us to only share the good, read the Psalms, read the prophets.