My mother was known for wise sayings; one she would often say to my brothers and I was, “Even the best made plans are quickly unmade.” She would tell us this, especially in our teenage years, when we would be disappointed about plans unraveling because some unforeseen complication or conflict would come up on the ranch. Plans were made and unmade all the time and I’ve always said that growing up a ranch kid taught me to roll with the punches. This year more than ever I have appreciated this enduring life lesson from my mother.

A wise friend had this to say about the year 2020, “Just roll with it…plans are only ideas!”

Man isn’t that the truth? How many plans around the world were made at the end of 2019; plans that were full of hope and vision. Plans for vacations, weddings, high school and college graduations, high school proms, state sporting events, birthday parties, new jobs, and exciting adventures. Plans that were unmade not long after. 

We began the year with the excited anticipation of resolutions and goals that are typical of flipping the calendar over to a new year. There’s something hopeful and restoring about new beginnings; it’s what makes me look forward to what the next year will bring, the idea of clean slates, new pages, and fresh starts. I’m a huge goal maker, vision reflector, dream constructor and eternal optimist. I love the New Year because we get the chance to start over and begin again, leaving the mistakes, failures and disappointments of the past year behind us and looking ahead to days that have yet to unfold and stories that are waiting to be told.

But I also think that there is something profound and valuable in the ability to look back on the previous year and see what lessons can be learned.They do say that hindsight is 2020! Who knew how applicable those words would become in the year 2020?! I have discovered that many important insights were gleaned this past year and I asked friends to share with me some of what 2020 has taught them. There is a goldmine of valuable lessons here:

~ Acceptance for what can’t be controlled

~ Slowing down is a good thing

~ Trust in the Lord is a continual process and requires more than just speaking it

~ Gratitude 

~ More time spent with family

~ The importance of being intentional with our relationships, quality over quantity

~ Patience

~ Appreciation for life and the people in it

~ Faith in the Lord takes away fear of the unknown

~ God is still faithful and good even when life isn’t

~ The value of the dollar isn’t worth the cost it sometimes requires 

~ It’s possible to flourish even in the midst of trying circumstances

~ The importance of moving forward in faith even when all you want to do is sleep through an entire year

~ People can disagree and argue, and sometimes be downright hateful, but if we look at them with the eyes of Christ it will change the way we see them

~ Life isn’t always going to be easy, but we still have to move forward in faith and purpose

~ The importance of being bold in sharing our faith

~ The value of toilet paper

~ The importance of preparation

~ The value of kindness and taking care of one another

~ Netflix isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

~ Compassion

~ God is in control, we aren’t

~ Nothing is impossible with God!

The greatest lesson 2020 has taught me is that, though the heat of difficulties was uncomfortable and frightening at times, so many good things can only be revealed in the fiery furnace of trials. This year has been responsible for more sleepless nights and anxiety riddled days than any other year for many of us. No one has been exempt from feeling the frustration, uncertainty, and weariness that has defined 2020. If I had to describe this last year in its most simplistic and yet profound way I would say that it was a refining process. I have found this great and precious truth: Those hard circumstances that feel like fiery furnaces have the ability to stretch, strengthen and reveal our faith. 

The refining process I’m talking about is like the process used to derive pure gold or other precious metals. Gold, as it’s extracted from the earth, is raw ore that requires processing before it becomes pure gold. It has to go through intense heating, or smelting, in order for the impurities to separate and float to the top where the refiner then can skim that “dross” off and only the pure metal remains. 

This is exactly what God, the Refiner, does in our lives. He allows us to go through the fiery furnace of trials, difficulties, mourning, discomfort, discipline and disease because He desires to purify us by removing any dross and impurities from our lives so that only a pure and authentic faith remains. Even gold has the potential of perishing at some point even though it goes through refining. Not our faith though, the more refining God brings into our lives the more our faith endures.

1 Peter 1:6-7 talks about this very thing: “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by the fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”. 

This is what I hope 2020 has brought into my life, refinement that results in genuine and pure faith. That as the chaos and concern of what is happening in my life personally and in the world at large begins to close in on me, my faith and trust in God will be stronger, more consistent and genuine. 

God has allowed a global pandemic, political division, racial tension, financial uncertainties, hunger, disease, natural disasters, personal loss to happen this past year…..trouble upon trouble upon trouble. This last year I have waited for the next shoe to drop and have wondered when and if it will all end. I’ve wanted things to go back to “normal” and at times became upset at the idea of a “new normal”. I’ve allowed frustrations and disappointments to control my reactions and how I treat those around me at times. I’ve let the weight of the world stop me in my tracks, keeping me from moving forward, left stagnant for a time as the hurt and uncertainty I observed in the world became too much for me to process.

BUT GOD….in His gentle mercy and unending grace reminded me that He holds it ALL. He holds everything from global disarray, national trouble to personal heartache. He holds all of these difficult circumstances and He is holding me. This is where the rubber meets the road in terms of our faith…are we going to choose to trust Him with the things in life that face us, truly trust Him, or are we going to give in to panic and fear, disappointment and anger because situations and people aren’t cooperating with our expectations and desires. 

Each day I have to ask myself, am I allowing these trials to define me or refine me? At the end of the day, I would rather be refined by challenging situations than defined by them. So I allow the process to happen just as God intends, and I face this new year with the wisdom of 2020 hindsight and the faith to look ahead in hope.

For the month of January I am going to be doing a series on how to face 2021 with the lessons that 2020 has taught us. Please join me here, on Facebook and Instagram to follow along and join in the conversation about facing the new year with a refined faith.