Reflections on 2023

 

Happy January 1, 2024!

One of my friends and sister in the Lord asked me the other day, "What were the highlights of this past year?"

I have no short answers. This last year has been insane. At the start of the year, I felt like my word for the year was 'Selah', which we can't prove with 100% certainty, but we think it means "praise the Lord"

How did the year line up? Well...

January: I traveled solo all the way to Florida, I experienced the ocean for the first time in over a decade, and for the first time completely of my own free will. I found myself in a sticky situation where my actions caused some hurt to a very good friend, but that led to a long late-night discussion where we really opened up a lot more with each other and agreed to talk things out whenever one of us managed to hurt the other.

February: I got a part time job at a gun shop. My maternal grandma died, the last living grandparent I had. When I watched my mom and uncles closing her casket, it broke me. It utterly broke me.

March: I had a friend in my online writing community who was in a bad way and they were struggling to see Abba's hand in their life. I wanted to help them. I wanted to show Abba's light to them. But mistakes were made, that would come back to bite me. They were made for specific reasons, not entirely unjustified, but still mistakes all the same.

April: Things escalated with this friend's situation, further mistakes happened.

May: My actions with this friend made a some important people very extremely mad. After six amazing years participating in an online writing community, I was removed. I wasn't banned from their next in-person conference, but I was strongly encouraged to stay home. I was devastated by the idea that I had allegedly become a disastrous and foolish person after spending so many years trying to reflect Abba's character.

June: A slight depression relapse as I struggled with myself and what I seemingly had become.

July: More depression, but after experiencing Abba on the Potomac River, I became determined to attend one last in-person writing conference, to say farewell to all my community friends.

August: I made the trip to western Tennessee for a week of some of the best writing advice I had ever gotten. The friend with the situation wasn't there and is no longer in my circle, but all the rest of my old friends became even better friends than ever before. I had some really amazing brainstorming sessions with a few of them, I came up with all kinds of ideas for new stories, we all made a ton of memories, and I even managed to make a couple new friends. Being there was one of the best decisions I made all year. And after the conference, I spent several days of one week with the friend I had hurt back in January. We continued to build our friendship.

September: I took my younger sister from Hagerstown Maryland to Assateague Island, 4-5 hours away. There, we befriended a family who we found out lived just a couple miles down the road from us. Hundreds of miles from home, and we ended up being campground neighbors with actual neighbors.

October: I started helping my uncle milk cows a couple times almost every week.

November: recommended by my cousin, I landed a second milking job. It occurred to me that, to my great surprise, I might just be cut out to be a farmer.

December: After years of research and study, I decided I finally understood what baptism was all about and decided to get baptized on New Years Day. Also, I picked an official pen name, Enoch Storm.

So that's 2023 in a nutshell. And despite all the pain and heartaches of the year, there's been a ton of really wonderful things, including several really amazing moments between me and Abba.

Overall, I'd say 'Selah' sums it up really well.

Now I'm excited to see what 2024's word is.