Goodbye 2024
2024 has been without a doubt one of the hardest years of my life. There were points in it where I was so desperate for it to be over. But 2024 is ending with me having seen God so much more than any other year of my life.
I have had years of my life that were incredibly low, but in those years the places I ran and things I clung to still left my heart wanting.
This year in the midst of my brokenness I had a moment where I sat with God and just asked Him why I was alive. All the things that I had previously held onto as my purposes had crumbled because of how empty they truly were.
My purpose in life is the exact same as everyone else’s. Sure it will play out differently, but the purpose I have for being alive is the same one we are all created with.
The purpose for being alive is simply to glorify God.
I felt absolutely empty. I wrestled with God. And in that is when I finally surrendered some of the things I was clinging to.
I don’t have any more clarity in what my future holds or what specifics God is calling me to, but I do know that He has called me to live to glorify Him. Every day that will look a little different, but that should stay my focus above all. I reached a point where I let go of clinging to the idea that someday things would get better. For me, that had become an idol. Instead of holding onto that, I chose to hold onto the fact that while things might get worse, I could continue to declare with every breath of my being that God is good.
This year certainly continued to test that. There were several things that continued to crumble around me and left me reeling. But every one of those things that came I was able to look in the face and know it couldn’t stop me from saying God is good.
2024 had a lot of pain in it for me. Physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. But 2024 shifted my life focus severely. I wouldn’t want to relive this year, but I wouldn’t erase it because in that pain I learned more about who God really is than I had ever fully known. The things that I knew in my head took root and that truth changed the way I live.
The ending of 2024 has felt like an explosion of answered prayers recently. God has taken some of the biggest things I have prayed for and dropped answers for them right into my lap. All of them have been things I could never have controlled and couldn’t even have dreamed up if I tried. I wasn’t holding onto that as my hope. I was clinging to the fact that no matter how dark it got, I could keep saying God is good, but in letting go of that I have seen Him show up and answer prayers I didn’t imagine He would. I don’t want to include this to reinforce the focus of good things are coming, because they might not be, and even if they are, it might be a long painful road to get there. But I wanted to include it because in acknowledging the power God has displayed this year, He deserves endless praise for the good He has done in addition to the lessons He has taught me.
So I am ending 2024 thanking God for the things He has taught me and the things He has given me. He is a God who gives and who takes away. But in either season I will declare that He is good.
