Like trudging through mud, I feel I’ve clawed my way through 2022. Though bright spots of joy peak out through the clouds, the onslaught of the uphill climb has rained down on me like few other years. 

I know, I should have had a brilliant year of snuggling my newborn, celebrating my new-to-Big-School daughter and revelling in the joy of a four year old. And yet. Yet, I have scratched my way through sickness and sleeplessness, sadness and severity of emotions – my own and others. What I wanted was to ENJOY my third, rest in the ease of parenting bliss because “we know how to do this”. What I got was a ton of late night Google sessions and even more early mornings unbidden. She’s a sweet, sweet thing, my third. But she’s a new kind of challenge for this mom. I never did get that “aaaah” feeling. From recovery post birth, to hacking it at Grade One, I feel like I’ve been drowning more than swimming. I love that we’ve got 3. Fiercely love each with all my energy, but I am drained by that love, by my commitment to them. And by guilt that I have not enjoyed it MORE. 

We’ve been swept away by endless tides of illness – month after month I have felt like a nurse without the training I so desperately need. Dragging myself through my own discomfort I have medicated and comforted and counted hours between multiple dosages. Every bout of sickness has felt like an anchor to any progress and hope. It has completely pulled out my legs and life – this year is marked an exhausting overwhelm. 

THis year has been trail-running training for my marriage. Testing the very limits of our endurance and trust. It’s been downright tense and uneasy at times, and yet, our tether remains unbroken. The discomfort of holding all that everyone needs has been more than I can bear.. Three kids has pushed my marriage to its barest form – talking only for transaction and purely to “make it through” another day. This is no way to live, to love. It is no way to hold a healthy marriage for time to come. And yet. Yet, this year has asked of us the impossible – to hold enough space and slack for one another through this uncomfortable, testing and trying time. Some days we have loosened our grip and let out more rope than others, and some days you could have cut the tension with a knife. I know this will not be the toughest year yet for our marriage – more will come. And in those moments I hope to remember the devout resolution I held onto this year – it will pass, we will weather the storm. Our Forever is forever linked and I hope that we stay closely knit, not sparsely tugging in different directions. BUt for the Grace of God, who holds us all together in Him. 

Most happy moments of this year are marred by a tug of tiredness. It feels like it might be part of me now, this tiredness. Like I will never fully amount to the capacity I had before. Like I may not be able to enjoy a holiday because; tired. Daily tasks sap the very vital joy out of me. Hopefully this is the season, there are obvious markers for a very real pull on my energy. I trust God to restore to me what this year has stolen. 

Early in the year I had the word REFORMATION. I felt it for me and my family. I had hoped it would be the notion of building up and re-creating. But rather, as I close out this year, I realise that the reformation God whispered was a warning, a telling of how He would gently, yet decidedly lead me through a gauntlet that stripped me of all the things that form me. THose ideas I have in my head about my identity. Things I hold dear to me. Characteristics and ideologies that define me. This year, clawing through the endless mud, I have had to let go of the person I know me to be. Some I’m embarrassed to even say that I held as my identity, but if I am to truly RE-form, I must acknowledge even the most unholy parts of me. I’ve found my identity in being a “skinny” mom, the “no ways you’ve had 3 kids” kind of body. I’ve held onto the identity of being a woman of big capacity – able to take on just about anything, add to my plate, handle the stress of it all and still be kind, have space for more. I found a slice of who I am is made up of being funny and fun – willing for daring adventures and new kinds of challenges. I’m the kind of woman who likes to plan and include others and host others and go out and have fun. I am a servant in the Church – always taking on what needs to be done, seeing it and solving it. I am a leader – taking others on a journey, growing and guiding. I am a good mom – with space and joy for her children. I have found peace in being secure – unworried by others and trivial things like my outward appearance. I am a successful fundraiser. I am a strong, independent woman who knows what she is doing. 

 Who am I if I am not strong and able? Full of capacity and kindness? Who am I if I am this person emerging from the tumult of ‘22? 

If I dig beneath the superficial worries of my weight and skin, my ill-fitting wardrobe and the lack of time (energy?) to spruce myself up, I weep at the thought of my capacity the most. I’ve had no capacity to be the person I thought I was. I haven’t served very many people in very many, meaningful ways this year. Haven’t led someone anywhere – not even myself. Haven’t had the capacity for discipline or dedication, spiritual formation or growth. I haven’t had the capacity to really know what my children need, and how to give it to them. Haven’t had the capacity to love my husband the way he deserves. Capacity. It has been completely stripped away. And, that may be the foundation of who I thought I was. A woman of capacity for the Kingdom. 

It looks like I have been reformed this year. But it’s been the back end of that reformation that has taken out my knees and forced me to sit and be still. I expected the rebuilding, but I got the retreating. I hoped for the recreating but I walked into the peeling back, revealing and reverting to nought, it feels. I haven’t reached the part where God starts to put things back together. Its been more of a pull-apart process. Like reforming or restoring a vintage car – you don’t just spray a new lick of paint over the top. I guess, you have to pull it apart first and get into the nooks and crannies to clear out the dust and years of ancient grime. You strip the car apart until perhaps a passerby wouldn’t be able to tell the make or model. Yet, this is still a reformation right? 

I had hoped that by now I would be in the “let’s put it back together” phase but here I still sit, in the darkened garage with all my pieces laying about. God meticulously, carefully working on each piece of my identity so that when (oh when!) He puts it together there will be a gleaming new version of me, with all the original parts now tinkered and perfected so that I can run the race God has for me. There hasn’t been any racing this year, that’s for sure! Only short trips up the street so that you can hear that ugly clunk to find it and fix it. The moments of wind in my hair have been sweet and short, but the gloomy hours of dismantling have been ever so precious – or at least, that’s my hope. 

I’m still trusting for reformation, for a wide-open-spaces kind of thrilling ride. I know it will come. But I am not counting the minutes or hours until that comes. I did that with Sadie – wishing for the 6-month-mark because then she’ll sleep, or like a bottle or settle a little more. And with each passing milestone, sitting, standing, crawling… the sleep has not arrived, and the happy-baby joy has only come in snippets. So rather than hang on for a milestone marker that will tell me I’m through with stripping away, I will wait patiently in hopeful anticipation of God’s grace and kindness to restore all that this year has stripped away. That God will rebuild and restore and reform me to pursue the new. He’s stripped away all that I held onto as identity so that what He builds upon in the next season will be Him alone – His grace is sufficient. I need to be a reformed woman to tackle what He has next. I will pursue the new.