A Whole Lotta Christmas and a Year in Review
We busted out the karaoke on Christmas night.
Remember how I encouraged you all a few weeks ago to make it a gentle Christmas? To be okay with not decorating the tree or preparing thoughtful presents?
Well, lucky for me, my in-laws had other ideas. They took Christmas and blew it up like a gigantic inflatable snowman in front of your lawn. Make that ten inflatable snowmen.
It’s been our tradition to go to the east coast for Christmas and spend it with my husband’s family since we spend every other holiday with my family in Southern California. And since both of my husband’s parents are now retired and living in a gorgeous home right next to the ocean in Plymouth, Massachusetts, they go all out. Their property is decked out with lights, there are endless containers of homemade Christmas cookies for the taking at any hour of the day, we feast upon delicious and fresh seafood every evening, we make gingerbread houses, watch Christmas movies, use towels embroidered with Christmas trees, and most excitingly for my kids (and, let’s be honest, the adults), we open lots of presents.
And not just that, Santa himself (with his assistant T-Rex) made a visit this year!
This Southern California family was transported into a winter wonderland for an entire week, so magical that I felt that with the snap of my fingers, reindeer could appear in the evening sky.
As a Korean immigrant, I didn’t grow up with all this. I wanted it, badly, as I saw neighbors making gingerbread cookies and countless presents under their trees.
There was one Christmas when I was 12 years old and my younger cousins spent the night on Christmas Eve. I tried to manufacture the magic of Christmas by putting out cookies for Santa and carrots for his reindeer. I pulled my cousins out of bed early Christmas morning to open presents, but they were much more interested in sleeping in. They immigrated to the United States at a later age than me and had even less of a nostalgic connection to Christmas.
God must have seen my hungering heart for a fuller experience of Christmas all those years ago and thought, “I’m gonna make sure she marries into a family that whips out Christmas towels during the holidays…”
It’s funny how that happens, right?
Well, now we’re back and it’s a new year. It’s funny how that happens too. Time just keeps moving.
We’re tidying up our house a bit and making space for a new season. The kids are back in school, I’ve started my new job.
And as I normally do at the start of each year, I take stock of the year before.
2021 couldn’t have been more different than 2020. Where 2020 was dramatic and chaotic, filled with so many transitions and surprises, both good and bad, 2021 was uneventful. On the one hand, that was exactly what I needed—a year filled with an easy routine and even mundane tedium. On the other hand, I was disappointed by the lack of progress in certain areas of my life.
Out of this disappointment, I pushed myself to look even closer, like a detective who notices even the most subtle of details, seemingly insignificant at first, but hold the clues that solve the mystery.
Almost always, we are prone to seek out big and impressive happenings, using those as our primary metrics of success and growth. This can sometimes blind us from the millions of subtle moments of joy, kindness, laughter, satisfaction.
I recently came upon this sentence by Greg McKeown in his latest book, Effortless: “When you focus on what you lack, you lose what you have. When you focus on what you have, you get what you lack.”
Wow.
This idea of abundance begetting abundance and scarcity begetting scarcity runs throughout Jesus’ teachings. In the famous parable of the sower, Jesus says these very words: “For to those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away” (Matthew 13:12).
Does he mean that people who have a certain amount of possessions will be given even more? Not necessarily. Rather, those who believe they have much will be given more and those who believe they have little will receive even less.
I can easily look back at 2021 and be upset by some major disappointments and boy, were there many. I didn’t make as much headway in my book as I wanted to. My husband didn’t get the jobs he applied for and then, got into a horrible bicycle accident at the end of the year, which prevented him from taking on any other freelance editing projects, I got into some massively challenging conversations with my parents, I could go on…
And then I recall Oprah’s words to a woman who bitterly shared about her life hardships. Oprah leaned in and said with compassion, “I’m sorry this happened to you. But can you tell a different story now?”
Yes, I think I can. Let’s try.
I wrote a lot and discovered a writing routine that works really well for me. I learned about failure, rejections, and killing your darlings, all of which are critical to being a “real writer.”
This past year, my daughter began sleeping through the night, which meant I started sleeping through the night again. Hallelujah!
I made friends, creating that illustrious village that’s always referred to when people throw around the adage, “It takes village to raise a child,” but ironically, no one has this village. I now have that village! In the form of my parents, relatives, and friends at whose houses I can drop off my kids when I’m in a rut and they can rely on me to do the same.
James and I celebrated our TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY and it was perfect.
The arguments with my parents led to more real and authentic relationships between us. This goes for the arguments with my husband as well.
I rested, recovered, and rediscovered my first love—the church.
Listen. I know that 2021 didn’t yield what we had hoped, not just for me but for most of us. After a devastating 2020, our eyes were set on a year that brought greater tidings. What ended up unfolding was more confusion as new variants appeared as well as heightened political divides and a realization that this virus was here to stay.
Maybe you also felt that in your personal life, you didn’t make as much progress as you would have liked. You may even feel like you backtracked.
Even still, can you reframe the story? Can you peer into the hidden places of joy and hope where your attention hasn’t been placed because it’s been monopolized by the glaring disappointments and heartbreaks of the year?
Out of that new focus, a whole new picture will begin to emerge.
Happy New Year, everyone. Here’s to an abundant 2021 and even more abundant 2022.