An Open Letter to 2022

 

Dear 2022,

    We haven't met yet, but everyone has heard of you. I hope you'll write back and tell me a bit about yourself! Are you gentle or are you wild? Will we even like each other? 

I must admit, I've got some misgivings about ya. See, your two older siblings kind of taught us all to look at a new year differently; since nothing has been 'normal' for quite some time, it feels like we all eye the horizon in a sort of battered dejection. "What wretched thing is going to happen next?" Not a great welcome, I know. 

But I want to change that for you. I want greet you with something deeper than the froth of a bubbly hope anticipating its pleasant fulfillment like other years. No, I want to welcome you in tonight with a quiet confidence; knowing that whether you come bearing even more upheaval or a reprieve from the pressure that continues to mount, the One who made you holds us. 

I told your brother, 2021, that I would get to gain more Christ during the coming year, and that that fact set my soul on fire. While that's still true, I look at you a little differently. This year kind of put me and my family through the wringer in ways I never imagined. It's the oddest sensation to feel both much stronger and incredibly weak as the result of a year full of trials. 

This year, though my soul still leaps at the thought of growing "in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ," the eagerness is less like a fire, and more like a little girl running to be held in a thunderstorm. 

There is so much raging outside, but in Him is peace. 

In sitting down to write to you, Romans 8:22-25 and 37-39 comes to mind:

"For we know that the whole of creation has been groaning together in pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience... 

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." 

(emphasis added)

Remember that frothy hope I mentioned in the beginning of my letter? It's such an odd comfort to me to know that that isn't really hope at all. But what I have today is. 

Today, I look to the horizon and smile: hoping for light. Today, I shelter from the storm in the arms of a loving Father. Because of Him, today, I'm ready for you. 

So bring what ya got, 2022. You're a mixed bag of the ugly and the beautiful, and you won't be normal. We may stumble along the way, and we may groan. But. We. Are. Held. 

And it's enough. 

xoxo,

Jillian Paige