I carefully selected my next fried oyster from the basket between us, and stared down at the page in my journal. “What else?” I left the question hanging in the air. Both of our minds traveled through the past twelve months.

The kids were home with a sitter, and my husband and I sat in a booth at one of our favorite restaurants, anticipating a delicious Cajun meal, and all that this new year might hold for our family. Every year, we begin our goal setting practice by first looking back. Together we write a list of every accomplishment, every celebration, and every way we saw God work. I look forward to this list writing every December.

That is why I cringed when he brought up a new idea for this year.

“Why don’t we also write down the failures and bad things that happened?” He proposed. That didn’t sound like a fun idea at all to me. There had been plenty of hard things, and I would much rather leave them back there in the old year. I looked down at our pleasant, happy list of gifts. It was much longer this year than either of us anticipated.

Met our daughter

Launched a book

Built and sold two tiny homes

Eighteen speaking engagements

Spoke together at several events

Family trip to Moab

Grayson summited a fourteener with his sister

Held neighborhood dinners in our home

Completed and submitted a book proposal

Guys’ fishing trip

Grayson started a mens’ prayer group

Eryn started a writers’ collective

Family swimming trip in the river

The list kept growing. Why muddy it up with the hard things?

“Okay”, I reluctantly agreed, and flipped to a blank page in my journal. As we began to write, I found that my mind could not step back into those pressing places without seeing the provisions that came with them.

Six weeks of hospital visits and stays, fighting for our daughter. But she came home! Healthy and well! And oh how deeply my faith grew throughout my midnight cries for her life.

Grayson was rear ended and our car was totaled. Yes, the one that we were planning to list for sale the next month. No one was hurt, and insurance paid more than what we would have sold it for.

A business project that went south. And how we grew in our marriage, and as a team, through those financially uncertain months, and the conversations and strategizing they required.

My vertigo returned. And my eye doctor had just acquired a new technology to help, and insurance paid for the cost of glasses despite not covering eye care.

Not everything on our list had an obvious “But….” offset. Yet, as that list grew and we looked at each failure, hurt, trial, or disappointment, we could see how our faith pushed to new depths.

So many items on our first list, the celebration list, could not be without this second list.

You might find it hard this year to write that first list, grasping for any hint of good. Perhaps, if you were to sit and write the second one, it might flow into the margins. Sometimes we have to look hard to see the depths of a year. We have to dissect it, month by month, and see what both the good and hard holds.

What mountains did you see God move last year?

What seas did you see Him split?

When there was no way, how did you see Him make a way?

Will His faithfulness last year inform our confidence in Him this coming year?

I popped a spoonful of gumbo into my mouth and flipped to a new page, Goals, I wrote at the top. And we began to dream of what we might be able to write on our celebration list a year from now.

“I want to read twenty books.” I told Grayson. He said nothing, only looked down to his own notebook and wrote, Read twenty-one books. I smiled at him, and asked if we could stop at the bookstore on the way home.

What are you hoping for this year? Before we look forward to what the next twelve months might bring, let’s first be informed by what God did over the past year. Some years, if I’m honest, that celebration list looks slim. This year I expected exactly that. We have to dig deep.

“We had a hard year.” Grayson opened our discussion with that night. It was true. Yet as we wrote out both of our lists, one celebratory, one hard, I felt gratitude for both.

For in both, we saw God work.

And that right there is a fine way to spend a year.