As the year continues to draw to a close, know we will be surrounded by an overwhelming amount of reminders. There are end-of-year videos, listening statistics, photo recaps, and carefully edited summaries of who we were and what we did. Every platform invites us to remember our year in neat highlights, to capture it in ways that feel acceptable to show the world.
But what is truly important to remember as this year ends?
We have been taught, in so many subtle and not subtle ways, to only show the pretty and polished parts of our lives. There is a culture of sharing the moments that feel impressive, joyful, and put-together. And yet, every life holds far more than what could ever fit into a recap. There are so many sides to each life and each story that we see. Rarely do we see anything that happened moments before or moments after the picture was taken. So much of what we will see at the end of this year is shaped by what we think is safe or worthy of being seen.
Andrea Gibson names this beautifully in their poem Boomerang Valentine:
“Picture the 738 selfies I deleted
before I took one I was willing to show to the world.
Picture me wishing I could get all of them back—
my so-called flaws stacked like baseball cards
I know will be worth something someday,
like compassion, like tenderness,
like my capacity to think myself a catch just because
I have never seen a chandelier I didn’t want to swing from.”
I hope each of us can look back at this year and hold with love the moments we are proud of, the moments we are not, the moments that made us smile, and the moments that made us weep.
I wish end of the year recaps showed us how many times you told your friends that you loved them, how many times your friends told you that they loved you, how many strangers we made smile, how many moments brought us to tears or moved us in deep ways, or how many days we made better by the small acts of kindness we did for another person.
Much of what matters most, happened off camera. In the quiet moments we sometimes forget even happened. In the moments of kindness and love, that you might never know changed the course of another persons life. As this year ends, let us end it with gentleness and tenderness for ourselves. For all that we showed the world, and for all that we felt we had to keep hidden.
If you remember anything this year, I hope you:
Remember your goodness.
Remember how loved you are.
Remember how important you are.
Remember that you are the best thing that has ever happened to you.
With compassion for all that you showed the world, and all that you did not,
Pastor Eli