Summaries are not my forte.
I think it all lies in the fact that to do so with a year is to withstand the temptation to not conclude at all and just recount everything!
I used to take the God sized dreams phrases lightly... but it’s something I now more than ever am awed by as I experience God shape desires that are bigger than I, plant 🌱 and bring to fruition delightful growth in my life I wouldn’t, frankly, think up on my own in the first place. The Lord does indeed work in ways that are not only higher, but just plain, well...
different
from our own.
Spring was so full of vivid goodness, yet tough, terribly good change. God’s kindness is so real and when we allow it, transforming 😭😍 Lakeside walks and amazing conversations on adulting + life with good friends, road tripping down south to a Texas wedding with a few of my favs (Galveston, we didn’t get to know you long enough), flying out from Chicago to Hong Kong to visit dear, hospitable people April-May. I wish I could share photos; the 17+ hour flight was far more than worthwhile. This was a childhood hope come to life, and I couldn’t do less than to drink deep of the tenderness of God’s heart in His fulfilling of even small things such as this!
Summer brought aunting privileges, and a full few months of everything else under the sun... nighttime volleyball and sand castles, the Hiding Place with sweet friends, 3AM Chinese class video calls, and guarding vehicle seats in a parking lot until help arrived. Yes, true story.
Ended the year with sooo many weddings (Texas, Virginia, Kansas, Missouri. No kidding. But God’s stories? They’re the best. Also topped the year off with the most airport check ins I’ll probably ever be able to “pack” into one, along with missed flights and naps in these said airports), bachelorette parties, and more fellowship + sister dates. How sweet is friendship, be old or new
These past few years have taken me where I haven’t expected to go, and they’ve filled me in ways I’d not know to ask to be filled. Learning strength in weakness. Learning a journey is made alone and yet in fellowship + friendship at the same time. Learning I serve a holy God who loves me without an ounce of effort other than to receive, a God who breathes not only life into our lungs but desires into our hearts and then in ways only He might at first deem best, fits them perfectly into the crevices of the purposes He had built with His own heart... long before they met ours. A God who satisfies our soul, floods them with His favor as every waterfall was created to imitate, and yet in the sorrows, sufferings, disappointments and failings of daily pilgrimage allows that tug at our strings every morning we wake for the world we’re destined for. A longing that Christ Himself bore, and we also will until satisfied with His very presence in that place.
I never imagined single years could be so rich, and yet here I am with so much humbled gratitude. I’m so excited for another new year to learn what I don’t know yet I have to learn... my prayers for 2019 were answered above and beyond, and I can’t wait to watch unfold His plans for a new year. Here’s to His making US new in the process; here’s to viewing the love of the Lord this year as if it were the low winter sun outside my windows, in pale colors sliding beneath the outstretched Missouri fields only to rise all. over. again. the next morning. Constant, shining over my world when its glowing in all its glory and when its seemingly hidden, but in reality doing the same on the other side of the globe 🤩
<3 Anna
“Sometimes God asks us to step out, or step through. We don’t know what we’ll see until we go through the deluge. It’s Scary to step into the unknown,
but it’s also where we find Jesus.
And wherever we find Jesus,
we find life.
Fear calls out our doubts. God calls out our names.”
Bob Goff
