God Can Redeem Your Worst Year Ever

The week our clocks sprang forward last month, I saw an Instagram post that went something like this: “Why are we complaining about losing an hour when we just lost an entire year?”

I laughed at the irony, but the caption also prompted some thoughts about 2020, the pandemic and our own individual responses to it all.

When we read—in the news and on social media—about dramatic events in dramatic terms, and we continue to read and perhaps comment about them, and about all our feelings about them, it sometimes makes it difficult to process and move past them. (By them, I mean all the feelings, not the actual dramatic events.)

The constant remembering and evaluating and questioning can make it difficult to separate situations over which we have no control from situations over which we are the only ones with any control. Looking at our own specific lives through the filter of the world in 2020 can make it impossible to see what is really true of our own specific lives.

So here we are, more than a year later, still talking about how hard everything has been, and how much of a struggle we’ve had, and when will we ever feel better about any of it. And yes, it’s true. It’s been a long, rough season, and we’re all more than ready for the virus to beat a hasty retreat.

But what also is true, for some of us anyway, is that 2020 wasn’t all bad. Perhaps it wasn’t even half bad, or a third bad. (Last week, for example, I wrote about how my friend Bethany’s life changed in wonderful ways over the past year.)

For some, 2020 brought disappointment and frustration and certainly a great deal of inconvenience, but it wasn’t the worst year ever.

This is where I have found myself during most of the last 12 months or so. Not because I was unaffected by the pandemic, but because when I look at the last year, I can’t help but see it through the lens of 2019—the year we lost both of my parents within five weeks of each other.

Their declines were unexpected, sometimes difficult to manage and extremely heart-breaking for my family. Not only was I close to my mom and dad geographically and relationally, I also was responsible for handling all their affairs, including their estate.

Other siblings helped in significant ways, and I’m very grateful for them. But it was a hard, hard year. My worst year ever, you could say.

I have no idea how long 2019 will hold that title. I do know, however, that 2020 didn’t even come close.

When the pandemic hit last March, I was dreading the first anniversaries of my parents’ deaths—my mom’s on April 19 and my dad’s on May 29. I didn’t know what those dates were going to feel like, and the anticipation made me anxious.

Then the shutdowns began. Nursing homes closed their doors to visitors. Funerals were limited to only a few mourners.

During the previous year, I had struggled to understand why God took both my parents so quickly and unexpectedly. But—slowly, gently—solace came with the realization that we had been spared the agony of going through the events of 2019 in 2020.

Had God’s mercy actually been at the center of His timing for my family? If so, how was He bestowing His mercy now—on other families separated from aging loved ones in long-term care, on those who were unable to hold proper funerals when their parents died, on so many other dear people experiencing hardship?

The quote above my kitchen sink, from the third book of the Chronicles of Narnia, provided the only answer: “I am telling you your story, not hers. I tell no one any story but his own.”

My story is that when school went remote for my girls and we were together at home, it was a good thing. We enjoy each other’s company. Molly, then a freshman, doesn’t mind being at home. Lilly, a senior, was ready to be done with high school.

In between homework assignments, we made bread and French macarons and ate our lunch in the back of Lilly’s car at the lake.

I’d gone to counseling and participated in GriefShare in the months after my parents died, but this was a different kind of therapy. The opportunity to spend all this time with my daughters before my older girl left for college in the fall was a blessing, plain and simple.

It was comfort wrapped in togetherness covered in love, all infused with the aroma of homemade bread.

It was a healing respite from the burden of grief.

It was exactly what I needed after my worst year ever.

I miss my parents terribly. At times, I still have to fight the urge to hop in my car and drive to their house to see them.

But when I look at 2019—this time through the lens of 2020—I see God’s hand all over it. The losses were great, but so were the gifts.

Time with family—brothers, sisters, in-laws, nieces and nephews. Concrete answers to prayer. Precious moments when I experienced the peace of God that transcends all understanding. A perfectly timed vacation in a beautiful place.

Then there were the realizations—about death and the brevity of life, about what really matters, about pushing through long-held fears, about what I am actually capable of doing, about the sufficiency of God’s grace.

I’m still learning from 2019. I don’t think that will be stopping anytime soon.

I don’t know all the outcomes and end results. But I see now that the year changed me. That it pushed me and grew me. That it has given me confidence to face the future, come what may.

This is what I want you to remember, more than anything else. If you’re a believer and 2020 was your worst year ever, not one minute of it was wasted. You didn’t “lose a whole year,” as the Instagram post I referenced above suggested.

I don’t know what is going to come of 2020 for you. Only God knows that, and He’s probably not telling just yet.

But He will use it in your life, you can be sure of it.

This isn’t intended to wipe away all your bad feelings or guilt you into finding the silver lining. I’m not a counselor, a theologian or a motivational speaker, after all.

I’m simply writing as a friend who has been through a very hard season—one that I never saw coming and felt ill equipped to handle most of the time.

It didn’t happen when everyone else in the world was experiencing the same thing, to some degree or another. That’s what’s made 2020 so hard—the virus on top of everything else.

It did happen, though.

I survived.

And now I can look back at the worst year of my life and give thanks. Not because my parents are gone or that I’m over all the sadness (I most definitely am not), but because God has promised to work “all things” out for my good, and He always keeps His promises. (Romans 8:28)

To me, and to you too.

So keep pushing through all the noise (in your head and in the world). Keep processing what’s real and hard in your life (as opposed to social media-generated drama). Ask God to help you see the truth about what has actually happened to you and your family.

It won’t happen overnight, but eventually, perspective will come.

As my friend Linda wrote recently, “We look back and reflect in order that we can move ahead unhindered. And we trust that God will do more than we can ask or imagine because of what we’ve experienced.”

♥ Lois

P.S. I’m linking up this week with #tellhisstory, InstaEncouragements, Recharge Wednesday, Let’s Have Coffee, Inspire Me Monday, #HeartEncouragement and Grace & Truth.