Traditions, Troubles, Trials & Tears

It’s New Years Eve. We don’t have many traditions with holidays and definitely not with New Years Eve. It’s just another night and I don’t stay up late any night so won’t be watching the new year come in. Tonight, could be different.

There is something about watching something leave that you are frustrated with that gives one a feeling inside of satisfaction. When we bought our cabin there were lots of “stuff” left there. Did I want it? NO! So Tyler had a fun day of burning junk. It felt good to watch it burn. We had a couple old chairs that had been around since 1810. They were worthless. They got burned. Even a car or two that we sold, especially one that had bad memories for me, was nice to watch it go out the driveway. Repainting a wall that was an awful green color, giving away the old corduroy jeans I found in Jim’s closet when we first got married. (Well I did wait a year and when he hadn’t wore them, they left) There is something rewarding about watching the things that trouble you leave.

This year has been a trial. In many ways it’s been a year of challenge, mole hill turned mountain issues and that doesn’t even count Covid. It’s been a year of change, some good, some good turned sour, and trials that stress the heart. This is normal in life. The little rain that must fall quote, kind of turned into torrential downpours. And yet, if I hadn’t told you that, you may have never thought that life was a challenge. We were taught to make lemonade out of lemons. Figure out a way to deal with the stuff that gets in your way and most of all, find good you can do when you feel like crying. There will come the tears. We have buried several people this year that were special. It wasn’t Covid for most of them, it was life which eventually brings death. That’s not a surprise. Before 2020, people died. We all are. It’s how you handle the transition. Perhaps one of my favorite memories of the year involved a funeral and a burial high on a hill in Wisconsin. For you see amid tears, there are some beautiful things waiting to be seen if you don’t let the tears from looking up. I know it’s hard to cry and look up. Tears make everything look blurry. However, Psalm 126:5 reminds us that if we sow with tears we will reap with joy. In my limited way of seeing life, I know that when tears come the soil of my heart is moistened and I feel deeper, reach out to people and love more. Tears are like a fertilizer to grow toward each other.

So this year, I may stay up tonight and see the New Year in, or I may just fall into bed like we did last night, tired. We put a ceiling up in our newly vaulted room and we were tired. Today we finish the ceiling and start on the floor. The 21 packages of flooring are in the back of the truck sitting in the shop waiting! I may make a list of my top 20 things for 2020, and then maybe I won’t. Maybe I will make a list of the 20 things I have learned from 2020. I may find 20 pictures I took that make me go “ah” or I may just look at the calendar and say maybe next year. What I know I will do is to be thankful that I in the midst of a pandemic, have a faith and a future. Faith that walks me hand in hand with the creator of the universe, and a future that gives me hope that it’s not about what happens down here that defines me, but that God calls me his child.

Oh yes, and I have instead of cool dice hanging from my rear view window, I have masks! That pretty much defines the year with the variety I have dangling to remind me when I leave the car take one. It doesn’t work: more times than not I walk back to my car to get one when I get to the door of Kwik Trip, but I am not alone. The lady with her sweatshirt pulled up in an odd position reminds me we are all in this together and laughing at the everyday things we find in life somehow makes traditions, troubles, trials and tears a little bit easier!