Nine Things that 2018 Taught Me

Recently, in taking a personality test, I was not shocked to read that my type is one that is defined as responding well to routine, being precise and organized, and being resistant to change. I laughed out loud when I read that, as 2018 is a year that’s been filled with nothing BUT changes, and oftentimes I’ve felt that stability will forever elude my grasp. However, in the fires of change, I feel that God has been forging a new strength and wisdom with which to better respond to all life brings in the future. As I take some time to reflect on 2018, I marvel at the grace He's shown me and the hope He has reignited through the fires of change and life lessons.

Here are nine things that 2018 has taught me:

1.     To lean on others. I can’t do it all myself, and neither can you. The pride of refusing others’ help could have kept me from some of the greatest joys and blessings this year. So, THANK YOU to all who have helped in some way this year—emotionally, financially, and otherwise; you know who you are!

2.     It’s just as expensive to live in California in 2018 as it was in 2017. In fact, it’s more expensive….

3.     How to better adjust to change. I moved 3 times to 4 different places: house -> RV in the side yard -> RV in the RV Park -> condo in Truckee. Did I mention this all happened in the span of 2 and a half months while I was starting a new job? In these 3 living spaces, I’ve had a grand total of 12 different roommates, including my kitty cat, Princess Tate. Meow!

4.     Someday I want to be able to afford flights that don’t require me to leave my house at 4:30am and don’t involve time-consuming layovers. Case in point: I took 17 flights to  6 different destinations in 2018 (only one away from 18 flights in ’18! Maybe I’ll make 19 in ’19….?). I have a feeling that day is far in my future, and right now I feel incredibly lucky to even be able to afford to travel so much.

5.     How to be wiser in my approach to relationships. I learned not to invest in people who can’t be bothered to invest in me. It may seem harsh, but trust me, the heartache is NOT worth it. Instead, I am trying to develop a healthy balance of being open and loving to others while still protecting my heart.

6.     Forgiveness is a really long, painful process. Jesus tells us in the Bible multiple times that we ought to forgive one another, just as He forgave us and gave His life for us. Easier said than done. It requires daily surrender, thoughtful and directed prayer and compassion towards the people who have hurt us, and honest, open communication with others. I’m so grateful for the ways that Christ is helping me forgive those who have hurt me, and is helping heal relationships that were fractured.

7.     How to face my fears. I really did NOT want to go back to teaching; it was through God’s intervention that I was brought back to this profession, albeit, kicking and screaming. He has shown me that His strength and grace is enough, no matter how many difficulties I face.

8.     How to choose joy and happiness in the midst of trying circumstances. There’s always something good happening, and especially towards the end of 2018, I started training my brain to find those things by keeping a gratitude journal that I add onto at the end of each day. As Bing Crosby sings in his famous song, Blessings, “If you’re worried, and you can’t sleep, just count your blessings instead of sheep, and you’ll fall asleep, counting your blessings!” I can attest to this from personal experience: it is the best way to fall asleep!

9.     How to take care of myself so that I can serve and love others more fully. For me, I’ve learned that means NEVER SKIPPING my morning coffee! Seriously, it may be close to $1,000 a year spent on coffee, but ask anyone who’s lived with me this past year: I’m pretty sure it’s well worth it!

All joking aside, I hope everyone who’s reading this takes the time today, tomorrow, or whenever they can to reflect on this past year and the lessons it’s brought. One of the best quotes I read recently came from a favorite author and poet of mine, Morgan Harper Nichols:

“If anyone truly wants to know how you’re doing and what you have been up to, talk to them about how you’ve grown in joy. Talk to them about how this year taught you how to be stronger than you ever thought you would be. Tell them the story about how through all the mountains and valleys of this year, you found endless, boundless grace.

           

Nobody has it all figured out yet. Nobody knows exactly what’s next. But we all have this present moment to live and also to reflect on how far we have come.”

So take a moment to reflect, then go out and live life and relish in the present moments. Because, as she says, nobody DOES exactly know what’s next.

The Ten Best and Worst Things about Living in Truckee

 1. The best part of living in a mountain town is the multitude of available rock climbs, hiking trails, biking trails, and things to do outside on the lakes or in the valleys. Duh.

 2. Summers are unbeatable. Winters have their own glittering, mysterious, quiet beauty; summers are warm, inviting, open and loving. They whisper of clandestine midnight lake swims, evening bonfires filled with laughter and song, and the golden embrace of the sun’s brilliant rays during long and gloriously free days. Even though I’ll work all summer, I’m still excited; summer nights are just as enjoyable as summer days. As soon as the sun fades from the sky, the heat dissipates and it’s a more comfortable setting in which to enjoy the beauty that surrounds us here in the folds of the Sierra Nevadas. 

3. Winters are pretty baller, too. From shreddin’ pow to cozy afternoons by the fire when we’re drowning under feet of snow, there’s a vast array of things to enjoy during the winter months. It’s sunny almost every day, rarely reaches negative temperatures (when it does, it’s only at night), and I can only think of a couple weeks’ worth of days where the temperature didn’t eventually get above freezing during the day. Not much to complain about (I’m lookin at you, Bay Area people), especially when you’ve moved from the polar north.

 4. Word travels fast around here. I’ve joked about small town gossip before, but THIS IS REAL. It almost makes me feel like I’m in the middle of a grade-B Hallmark movie plot that I’ll eventually wake up from and realize was just a dream. Or so I’d hope. There’s that person in town who is the eligible bachelor or bachelorette, and people talk about it to everyone else because everybody has to know what’s going on and has to have an opinion about it. In the same vein, it’s easy to be recognized around town. Because of my collection of jobs in the community, I oftentimes run into parents of my students from school, or someone from church at the grocery store or at Starbucks. This can be an unexpected joy; at other points, I just want to turn invisible and not have to plaster a fake smile on my face and make inane small talk. I’m surprised by how much I intermittently miss the anonymity that cloaked me whenever I went out in Minneapolis or St. Paul. There, at least if a date went poorly, no one had to know about it, and I didn’t have to see that person whenever I ran errands around town.

5. Efficiency is key. When living in a mountain town, errand days are condensed to a one day-long venture to Reno, 30-40 minutes away. This means that I’m limited in the number of impulse purchases I can make per week, simply because I’d have to go so far out of my way to make them. This has been a very positive change. I’ve made a deal with myself that almost anything I find in Target that I like, I have to at least wait until the next week to purchase. That way I know that if I’m still even thinking about it in a week’s time, it might actually be “necessary” (let’s be honest, what impulse buys in Target are ever necessary? Oh, the lies we tell ourselves….), or at least be worth buying. I’ve noticed this has cut down considerably on nonsensical splurges (yes, that book looks great, but have I ever considered going to the library for it instead? That way it won’t collect dust on my shelf after I read 4 pages and give up on it. And really? Another red nail polish? Don’t I have 10 of these at home already? I know I don’t have the exact shade of Berrylicious Delight, but won’t Forever Yummy suffice? By the way, how many red nail polishes is a girl allowed to have before it’s too many? Just asking for a friend here…).

6. Traffic is either amazing or terrible. In the off season (Sept-November, April-early June), cars hum along I-80 and highways 89 and 267 seamlessly with few problems or congestions. During the heavy tourist seasons? Two words: Good luck. Plan to leave really early in the morning to go anywhere, or budget an extra 30-90 minutes for travel time. Take your pick.


7. It’s easy to find jobs here because Truckee is a tourist town; this is a blessing and a curse. With 5 jobs in addition to local church involvement, I end each week exhausted more often than not. I crave my Sabbath day to venture out on some new hiking trail, or to sit in the sun and read a book. It’s been refreshing and necessary and I don’t feel guilty for choosing to occasionally rest instead of constantly work. Boundary lines are slowly becoming firmer, and this is a. Very. Good. Thing.

8. It takes a surprising amount of time to feel established here. These first 10 months have felt largely like using the guess and check strategy for an algebra problem: I’ll think that I have a logical answer to a scheduling inconvenience or a problem at work, only to find out that it doesn’t quite fit and it’s time to go back to the drawing board. This has increased my faith exponentially. Every time I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve felt like I just can’t take it anymore, I’ve prayed for the Lord to change my heart, my attitude or my circumstances. Each and every time, He’s answered that prayer, and it’s usually been in ways beyond what I could have hoped for.

9. The community here is incredible. Living with my best friend and her husband and kids is a blessing. Who doesn’t want to wake up and have a cup of coffee and chat with the person who knows you best in the world? I was afraid it might get old, or that they’d get sick of me, but (and maybe this is because I’m gone house and dogsitting for others about two weeks out of every five…) it hasn’t. It’s the best. It keeps me grounded in what real life is—beautiful, messy, full of “I’m sorry”s and “you’re the best!”s and all the rest.


 10. It’s a difficult spiritual environment here in Truckee. Living in California has challenged my faith and my trust more than at almost any other season in my life. I have struggled and wrestled with my faith and have asked more real, hard questions of my Lord than ever before. I’ve lost hope more times than I can count, and have doubted that this really was the right decision, or that I’ll ever find a man out here who loves Jesus, is close to my age and unmarried (it’ll be a miracle, I assure you), or whether or not I really actually, truly want to return to the teaching profession (it’s in my blood, though. I can’t get away from it).

Through all of these best and worst parts, I’ve learned that it’s okay to doubt, to struggle, and to fight through life at some points. At least the Lord is moving me forward, and though I sometimes feel paralyzed by fear when I think of the next step, I’m grateful He’s provided so many amazing people with whom to walk this road, and an absolutely stunning view around every turn. As Bob Goff says in his most recent, brilliantly written book Everybody, Always:

“There are plenty of questions I still have. I usually don’t have all the green lights I’d like. There’s probably a lot you don’t have nailed down yet either. Be honest with yourself about these things. God is less concerned about the people who admit their doubts than the ones who pretend they’re certain. Each day I start with the things I’m certain about and try to land my weight on those things. It always starts with a loving, caring God who is tremendously interested in me and the world I live in.”


After all, what else do we need?

Take Time to Be Still

Thump, thump, thump. My wheel bumped along the pavement and I gritted my teeth with the sound. There must be something in the wheel, or….I’ll have to get someone to look at it next week? I rolled my eyes in annoyance. Great. More car trouble—just what I didn’t need on a Saturday night errand-run in Reno, 20 miles from home. I put pressure on the gas pedal and frowned; I had to press harder to get my car in gear than I usually would have, which was disconcerting. As I straightened out onto the street, understanding dawned. Making sure that no one was coming behind or around me, I let go of the steering wheel and my car immediately swerved to the left. Dang it. I’ve got a flat. That knowledge took the wind out of my lungs as surely as the air had leaked from my tire. Well, there go all my weekend plans.

I have a perpetual problem of over-working myself. As a young, single woman, I find a sense of security in financial stability, and moving out to California put a dent in my bank account and conversely fueled my ambitions to attack life and stuff away as much cash as possible in the coming months. So, I currently work 6-7 days a week at five different jobs, pick up extra shifts when I can, and am volunteering and serving at my church two days a week. I don’t say this out of pride; in fact I say it as a word of warning: this much work is a fast track to burn out.

By quitting my teaching job and taking some more low-key, part time jobs, I’d hoped to have MORE and not LESS time to rest. Well, I was wrong. This current lifestyle is racking up a higher number of work hours with fewer breaks in the day than I had while I was teaching. My car has become my closest companion, as I’m constantly on the go from one thing to the next, and free time is eaten up by driving (it seems that everywhere in Truckee is a 15-20 minute drive from everywhere else I need to be) or social events. The only benefit (and it is definitely a positive point) I’ve seen in this change is that I’ve experienced far less emotional stress bleeding into my personal life from my work life.

The main negative side-effect that I’ve noticed from non-stop work apart from lack of rest, however, is that with all of the schedule juggling and planning my brain manages and organizes every day, I have a tendency to think that I am the one in control of my schedule, my finances, and my future. That thought pathway has not led to confidence, though; it’s led to more worry and anxiety, and I now understand why: Whenever difficult or inconvenient circumstances arise, if I think that I’m the one in charge of my life, I choose to shoulder the burdens while forgetting that God is actually the one providing for me and taking care of everything. It’s taken a flat tire, an infection, and two subsequent doctor’s office visits in the span of 3 days for God to grab my attention: I am not the one in charge; I am not god of my life.

In my devotional on Friday, the opening line stated, “Take time to be still in God’s presence.” I had silently nodded in agreement with those words, thinking, Yeah, yeah, I know I need to do that. And I will, but later, when I have more time. Well, God definitely arranged it. Sure, I know that flat tires and infections are and can be just a natural part of life’s rhythms. However, in this case, I truly believe God wanted to remind me of an important lesson in a loving way: I need to proactively carve out time to be still and know. When I don’t, my life usually spirals out of control, consumed with to-do lists, ambitions and busy plans. I lose perspective of Who is really taking care of me in all situations.

I ran towards the sliding doors of the Home Depot—I’d pulled into the nearest well-lit parking lot, and blessed the Lord that it was a still-open Home Depot. The only other better places for a car breakdown would have been in front of a mechanic’s shop or an O’Reilly’s or Napa Auto Parts store. However, at 8pm on the Saturday before President’s Day, Home Depot had the advantage of still being open. I also knew it would contain the kind of people who could probably help me—Do-it-Yourself-ers. As I hurried in, a Home Depot employee walked into the aisle right in front of me. I quickly approached, explained the situation, and within minutes I had a slough of people ready to help. Three employees were ready to help with tire irons and a jack, and two strangers who overheard my predicament also jumped in and offered to help and be my go-to in case something happened on my way home from Reno. We fixed the tire without much further incident, but because it was Saturday and no tire stores were still open, I was facing a full Sunday at home without the ability to travel freely, especially because snow was expected that day (and came). Driving in Truckee during a snowstorm is precarious at best, and with a spare tire? No one is foolish enough to attempt that.

What appeared to be an inconvenience at first glance was, in fact, a providential event. I was stuck at home, by myself, for an entire day. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d allowed my body and mind to relax and unwind like this. I wish it hadn’t taken a flat tire for God to force me to stay home for a day and do what’s best for me. I have to get better at recognizing my need for solitude, rest, and time in His Presence, and then honoring that need. There’s a reason the Bible voices this as a command, and not just a piece of advice: to be still and know is a necessary practice for us. When we take time to stop life and to just be, we are able to reflect, to change our perspectives, and to recognize that no matter what happens in life, flat tires and all, God IS. This is why, despite a few more financial and health setbacks, I feel refreshed and at peace that God will take care of me through anything, no matter what.

P.S. Speaking of providence, did I mention that the flat tire ended up being a quick, $13.50 fix? Incredible.

“He says, ‘Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in all the earth.’ The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.” 

~Psalm 46:10-11