Rediscovering Faith and Gratitude: A Year to Remember
One of my friends invited me to write a letter to 2024. Here’s the assignment. I’m sharing it because it’s worth your while– present, past and future. So dive on in!:
Write a letter thanking 2024 and blessing my 2025 self. Thank myself and recognize and honor all I’ve been through these last few years. Allow myself to release whatever needs to be released.
So I did. And to jog my memory of what happened in 2024, I collected a few of my journals. I skimmed one while writing my letter. I cried. I forgot so much. As I read my own words, my heart fluttered, my mind raced. I knew. I remembered just how very powerful I really am! In reading only a few of my journal entries, I realized I needed to go back to 2024. To begin again. To read them from start to finish. Jan 1 to Dec 31. Or for my friends across the pond, 1 Jan to 31 Dec. (Hey, friends! 👋🏾)
Resistance and Rest
But then, to my great big surprise I encountered resistance. Big resistance. Major resistance. For nearly a week, I sat with my journals, ready to dive in but unable to. I simply couldn’t. So I didn’t.
And then today I joined my small group spiritual program called Heart Longings hosted by the Shalem Institute. We started by our session by reading The Threads in My Hand by the one and only Howard Thurman (scroll to end to read).
And I shared about it: “There are so many threads/ way of life but only one is steady and sure and helps me find my way– the one with God holding the other end guiding me.” I shared about being so well rested, a far cry from my share last month when I felt like my body was no longer my own because of my sleep. And instead, relaxing in the rest. I shared about the resistance. About the tension between resting and wanting to do and create and earn and grow and move. About wanting to go back and read my journals. To read about where I came from, what I overcame. But something stood in the way. And yet through it all, when I remembered to remember, I held on tighter to the “steady thread”.
And each of my group members and the leader reflected back to me what they heard. One of them reflected back what she knew. What she felt. What she heard in my unspoken words:
You’re allowing yourself to rest. You’re taking your life back!
Reclaiming Through Reflection
I needed to hear that. That’s why we do this exercise, you know? That’s why I go to two way prayer meetings! Because I need people who hear God who can also hear me, and the God in me. It wasn’t until she said that that I realized I’m reclaiming my life by reading my old journals.
Who I was isn’t who I am and I’m grateful because who I was was good! I can feel my feelings and remember what I forgot.
That’s what stood out to me when I first skimmed those few journal entries to write this letter bidding adieu to 2024 and bienvenue to 2025. It was surprising how very much I’d forgotten. And it was also surprising how many of my prayers have been answered! How many prayers I prayed, and how my prayers, forgotten by me, weren’t forgotten by God.
And so with this love and light of truth from my beloved community, I reclaimed my life.
Hours after our meeting ended, I delighted in the cold and walked to Staples and I bought some tabs/ flags and a beautiful gold pen so that I can read through my 2024 journals– all 8 of them!– and categorize them. Relearn the lessons. Remember what I forgot. Feel my feelings. Face myself. Confront parts of myself that I’d forgotten about. Because as I heard the pastor of 2819 say recently, “we can’t conquer what we don’t confront”. And if I can’t even confront myself, imagine then how much harder it’ll be to confront things outside of myself!
I don’t know what’s to come of this. I don’t know where this is heading. But I know it’s going to be oh so very good!
Aligning My Life with God’s Love: A Prayer of Trust
God, thank You that you gave us the gift of feelings. Thank You that feelings are light posts, offering a new way to see our lives. An invitation to notice, to do or not do or undo or redo. Thank You that we have the knowledge, skills, ability and above all understanding to do things differently. To do things more holy. To be more holy.
Thank You for each new day and each new breathe, a quiet whisper of your holy name. Yahweh. Thank You that with our breathe we call on your name ever when we are so unfocused or so overwhelmed that we intentionally call on You. Thank You for courage and boldness to notice, to be, to pray, to ask, and to receive. Thank You that whatever is on the other side of our fears is always and inevitably good! Thank You that fear is a portal to see Your face and experience Your glory. Thank You that though we may feel our feelings, we aren’t our feelings. Help us align our feelings with Your will.
Your will and ours be one. And may it be fun! Thank You that you move gently and deeply within in. Thank You for the reminder to be gentle and deep with ourselves, too. Thank You that all is well. That is is well. That it is already done.
And thank You God that so very soon, we will see and experience it be done well in the physical, too.
Get In On the Action!
Take a moment to pause and reflect. Here are a few ways to join in on the action. After all, transformation isn’t a spectator sport—you gotta get in the game! Choose the way that feels right for you:
- Write Your Own Letter
- Write a letter to 2024. What are you grateful for? What lessons or blessings will you carry into 2025? Let this be your way to rest, reflect, and honor where you’ve been before deciding where you’re going! Don’t rush—relish this moment; you’ll never have it again.
- Revisit Your Journals
- Open up your journals, reread old entries, and reflect on what you’ve written. What has God done this year that you may have forgotten? Did you meet any resistance like I did? Let God show you His goodness and faithfulness all over again.
- Hold on to God’s Steady Thread
- What has been your steady thread this year? How has God guided you through rest and resistance? Take a moment to reflect, journal, or share your thoughts in the comments—I’d love to hear them!
- Look Through Your 2024 Camera Roll
- Scroll through your photos from this past year. What moments– mundane or otherwise– made you smile? What does looking back inspire you to do, see and experience more of in this new year?
I’d love to hear how you’re reflecting on this past year—drop a thought or share your own reflections below!
The Threads in My Hand by Howard Thurman
Only one end of the threads, I hold in my hand.
The threads go many ways, linking my life with other lives.
One thread comes from a life that is sick; it is taut with anguish
and always there is the lurking fear that the life will snap.
I hold it tenderly. I must not let it go …
One thread comes from a high-flying kite;
it quivers with the mighty current of fierce and holy dreaming
invading the common day with far-off places and visions bright …
One thread comes from the failing hands of an old, old friend.
Hardly aware am I of the moment when the tight line slackended
and there was nothing at all — nothing …
One thread is but a tangled mass that won’t come right;
Mistakes, false starts; lost battles, angry words – a tangled mass;
I have tried to hard, but it won’t come right …
One thread is a strange thread – it is my steadying thread;
When I am lost, I pull it hard and find my way.
When I am saddened, I tighten my grip and gladness glides along its quivering path;
When the waste places of my spirit appear in arid confusion,
the thread becomes a channel of newness of life.
One thread is a strange thread – it is my steadying thread.
God’s hand holds the other end.
