I can see them now: the usual “Thank God this year is over” memes that seem to surface at the end of every year. Only this year, I imagine they will express that sentiment on steroids. 2020 has been a year for the books, and a lot of us have been left feeling like much of this year has been lost and that there’s been nothing we could do about it. In fact, stopping to think for a moment about all the lost experiences can be overwhelmingly depressing.
There are regulations that have cost countless people the
last days with their loved ones whom they are not allowed to visit in the
hospital, have cost countless couples the wedding of their dreams surrounded by
their family and friends—if they even were able to get married at all, have
cost countless others the opportunity to have closure and to fully celebrate
the memory of their departed family member or friend by having a funeral, have
cost countless students the opportunity to fully celebrate their success in
completing high school or college or graduate school. There is peer pressure or
fear that has cost countless grandchildren months-worth of hugs or even
face-to-face time with their grandparents and vice versa; restrictions that
have kept spouses and families separated, oceans apart from each other;
closures and cancellations that have cost countless “lasts” that will be never
be regained.
These are not hypothetical examples. I know people in each
of these situations, and even just the cases I know about are enough to make me
sick to my stomach. In my personal life, too, it is easy to get sucked into the
depressing cycle of thinking how many weeks of our marriage we have lost as we
enter the fourth month past our original wedding date, still thousands of miles
apart with no end of separation in sight. But instead of fixating on what has
been lost, I have been challenging myself—and I would like to challenge you
too—to focus on what has been gained.
To show you what I mean, I’ll give you a glimpse into a
conversation I have with myself almost every day:
It’s
been over three months since I was supposed to be with my husband.
Yes,
but you’ve gotten three extra months of time to build the foundation for your
marriage.
It’s
been almost four months since I was supposed to be living in my new country.
Yes,
but you’ve gotten almost four extra months to enjoy the parts of your home
country that
you’ll
miss.
I’m
missing out on family celebrations in my new country.
Yes,
but you’ve gotten to spend extra time with your parents and extended family
here.
I
haven’t gotten to start setting up my new home.
Yes,
but you’ve gotten to finish a lot of extra things that would have been left
hanging if you left when you
were supposed to.
These are just a few examples from my own situation, but I
encourage you to examine your year and think about what you have gained in
2020. Absolutely it is important to acknowledge, grieve, and lament for
everything that has been lost. The losses have been real and painful, and we
should not ignore that fact. But we don’t have to wallow in the losses.
Instead, we can search for and celebrate what has been gained.
What uplifting conversations have you had with friends in
this season? What people have you gotten to reconnect with? What books have you
gotten to read? What has God taught you? What have you come to appreciate? What
have you gotten to participate in that you wouldn’t have been able to
otherwise?
You might have to think hard to find what you have gained,
but let me encourage you to put in the effort and start thinking of 2020 in
light of the good things it has held.
And instead of wishing for this year to be over, let’s be
excited that we still have a full third of the year left in which to gain. Because
the truth is, this year we have had the exact same amount of time as we always
have—24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, and 365/6 days in a year. The
question is—how will we view that time? Will we focus on it as time that we should
have been spending doing something else, going somewhere else? Or will we focus
on it as time that can be fruitful regardless of where we are or who we are
with?
This is true for everyone, but for followers of Jesus, there
is an even deeper way in which we can view 2020 as time gained rather than time
lost. We know that God wastes absolutely nothing and that He is always about
the business of making us more like Jesus. In God’s eyes, then, we can be
confident that 2020 is not a wasted year, which means it is not a wasted year
for us. Every loss we experience has the potential to be turned into a gain if
it helps us know Jesus better and makes us more like Him (see Philippians 3). Looking
at 2020 from this perspective, we see that it just might be one of the best
years yet.
So let’s embrace the last four months of 2020 with an eye toward finding what there is to gain. And when reach year’s end, let’s look sober-mindedly back on the year and say, “Yes, much was lost, but praise God much more was gained.”
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