Media That Inspired Me This Year, Habits to Leave Behind, and a Word for 2021

 2020 may have been one for the dumper, but there were some really great podcasts, books, and blogs that shaped me this year. I thought I would share some of them.  

BOOKS:

This was not my best reading year. But these were my top reads of 2020:

Miracle and Other Reasonable Things, by Sarah Bessey.  This is my number one pick of the year.  It was balm for my soul (as the pandemic unfolded during an election year) while I had an unraveling and rebuilding of my faith and views. Sarah Bessey knows a thing or two about wrestling and holding tight to Jesus even as our understanding of Him shifts.  

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, by Lori Gottlieb.  A memoir about a therapist who finds herself in therapy.  It was sweet, tender, engaging. 

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, by Grady Hendrix.  80's housewives in Charleston SC have a fabulous trashy book club, and then a vampire comes to town.  Think Steel Magnolias meets Stephen King.  I loved it.  There was a lot of misogyny displayed by the husbands, which felt very accurate to me for the time period.  It also showcased the racial and economic injustices of the time period as well, but no comment was made on them and I appreciated the author letting it sit out there for the reader to contend with.  And there was violence and gore and quirky characters.  It was fantastic for me. 

PODCASTS:

In no particular order...

The Good List, with Tsh Oxenreider This podcast will inspire you to look for the good and beautiful in the world, and cultivating practices for living a sacred everyday kind of life.  

10 Things to Tell You by Laura Tremaine.  Laura has incredible book recommendations. She also shares really deep prompts for self-reflection.  She has episodes on the mind-body connection, the power of intuition, anxiety, and so much more.  I loved her series on racial biases and her episode on sitting in stillness was one of my favorites of the year.  

The Minimalists.  Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus.  I have followed these guys for years and I am a superfan.  I don't even care if you think I'm weird.  Their podcast has definitely shaped my thinking and how I live life, trying to "love people and use things, because the opposite never works."  I love their banter and they have a crazy eclectic mix of guests and ideas.  

Sorta Awesome.  Meg Tietz.  I am an OG Awesome.  This is just a bright space in the Podcast sphere and their Facebook group is truly a safe haven.  They really talk about all things awesome and bringing out the awesome in yourself.  LOVE. 

Reply All.  PJ Vogt, Alex Goldman.  This is a podcast about the internet.  But it is so much more. PJ and Alex have crazy chemistry and hearing them laughing is one of my favorite things.  

For The Love with Jen Hatmaker.  The whole series on faith leaders.  And specifically episode from June 26, 2020, with her daughter Sydney on Being Gay and Loved.  This was the listen of the year for me and it completely changed my mind.  Just like that.  

BLOGS:

Shutterbean, Tracy Benjamin. I have loved Tracy Benjamin's website for a long time. It is totally unique.  Photography, food, art.  Her Instagram is really lovely too.  

Good News Network. Only good and inspiring stories to be found here.  

Hard NOS OF 2020:

The News: Basically all of it, except the one listed above. 

Facebook: The dumpster fire of the internet.

HABITS TO LEAVE BEHIND:

I wonder if we could think about bad habits we would like to leave behind instead of new years resolutions.  Do you have any? 

Facebook and the news were two of mine.  Doomscrolling as well.  I think I want to try and share more of myself and the ways God has changed me this year.  I'm a Peacemaker by nature, and this past year was so hard.  I realized I was stuffing down big important things to make others comfortable.  Until that Peacemaking left me feeling no peace inside.

A WORD FOR 2021: STAND

Do you pick a word for the year? Mine for 2020 was Behold, and here's a post about it. This year my word came to me in such a strong way of knowing.  I had just sat and prayed, asking if He had a word for me that I would know it was from Him and not my own head.  Less than 5 minutes later, Jay and I turned on The Stand to watch the first episode of the new miniseries on CBS.  We were stoked for this series, we love Stephen King! It opened with the narrator gave a creepy prophetic intro to the show, and the intro closed with "This is where you will make your Stand. For that is God's will for you."  And I got chills and knew that 100%, like it or not, that was my word for 2021.  

Won't you Stand with me and show up for 2021? Arms open, hearts full of love.

Reflections on 2020: A Year to Behold

 

We kicked off 2020 with a word for the year, and I had some aspirations and goals. I am not even sure WHERE those journal pages are, but I do remember that I wrote with so much intention. Our word for 2020 however, was nearly prophetic, and there were many days I sat with it at the front of my mind.  Our word was Behold.  And man, did we ever.  This year we beheld many things, some of them precious, some painful. 

In February, we started to hear about the pandemic as it began its slow and menacing spread into our country.  At the beginning of March, Jay’s grandmother died. We found ourselves driving up to Rhode Island as the pandemic ramped up. We drove 16 hours. We visited and laughed and cried. We celebrated a life while mourning a death and we worried about the packed house full of friends and family.  We looked through a lifetime’s worth of photos and belongings.  Sacred objects found new homes.  We took a drive out to Newport and wandered around.  We drove by the mansions.  Ate at a pizza shop. 

We returned home and then lockdown came.  Eden celebrated her 11th birthday with just immediate family.  She smiled like it was the best day ever.  Isaac matched and then outgrew his Dad. Black Lives Mattered.  We found a baby snapping turtle. I began a weight loss journey in the middle of a pandemic.  The COVID numbers soared, summer came.  We played games. People protested.  An election year ramped up.  In July, Jason was cutting grass out back and had a freak accident.  A metal rod shot into the side of his ankle, inches deep.  We went to the ER.  I had to wait in the car at 1 a.m. because of Covid precautions. Jay couldn’t walk.  My incredibly active, UPS driver husband was couch-bound and out of work for weeks.  We beheld all these things.  His healing was slow, he went from crutches to limping.  We were so thankful nothing was broken, but ligaments were torn and healing was painful. We spent time together. We lamented the brokenness of the world around us.  We budgeted. We crossed our fingers. Jay went back to work.  We began a new school year.  We beheld all these things. 

 

I listened to a story that I didn’t want to and changed my entire mind, just snap like that.  It felt divine; like God took my thinking and turned it, “Nope, this way now, this is the way of love; you go this way”.  We watched dear friends and others become unraveled over politics.  We became unraveled in a different way.  We questioned church leadership.  We spoke up.  We questioned our own beliefs.  We wrestled and we became tired of swallowing down practices that felt like lumps in our throats.  We peacefully stepped away from our church home of 10 years.  We hoped dear friendships would not be lost. We grieved.  We sat in the space of uncertainty and we BEHELD the God of the Wilderness.  The God that sets a table wide for ALL.  We read and studied the book of John with friends.  We got a beautiful new dining table from my in-laws after Jay’s grandmother’s estate settled.  

I emailed an old friend who was an Episcopal Priest. We visited an Episcopal Church.  We worshiped wearing masks in a new space that was so different,  but full of the same Holy Presence. We read school books. We picked apples and pumpkins.  We listened to Isaac play guitar.  I watched Eden draw and paint.  I read the Daily Office and prayed. Sometimes I cried and I didn’t quite know why.  Sometimes I doom-scrolled the news.  We decorated for Christmas. Advent began: a new season of waiting following a year of waiting. But with Advent, we wait with confidence of what is coming and this gives me so much hope.  

     This year seemed to unfold in ways that I had never imagined and I can’t recall a year where I have felt so strongly that we were pulled along as passengers.  And yet it was a beautiful year. There was coffee and coziness and laughter.  There was GROWTH and the shedding of dead things.  There was the sacred and the monotonous and pain and joy. Confrontation, unraveling, courage. Dread and fear. Hope and new beginnings.  Scarcity and abundance.

We encountered the God of the wilderness.  The God also, of the Promised Land.  This Jesus who when reviled, blessed; when persecuted, endured; when slandered; spoke kindly.  I hope that this is what I will remember most about this year:  what I learned about my God when I set out to behold Him.