The Clarity of Hindsight

learning lessons from the past

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2020 was a pretty difficult year. My daughter's marriage ended; my son's best friend from high school took his own life. I had a panic attack that had me in the hospital for four days. The youngest of our children left home to live as an independent adult, emptying our happy nest as we transitioned from living in our apartment to a caravan. I resigned from my job of eleven years as a pastor, ready to travel and write full-time. I published my first e-book and started a second blog. And that's all without mentioning a little global pandemic, learning to work and pastor remotely from home, canceling travel plans, and missing my grandmother's funeral. 2020 was a challenging year.

Hindsight is one of the best teachers there is. When we take the time to reflect and listen to the voice of the past, we can take valuable lessons into our future, lessons that make us stronger, wiser and more resilient.

Here are some of the important things 2020 taught me:

Quality Nutrition

I'm not just talking about physical food. I need quality nutrition for my mental, spiritual and emotional health as well. What we feed on has a significant impact on our health in every aspect of our lives. 2020 taught me the value of filling my life with quality wisdom. I read good books, listened to podcasts and spent time with wise friends. This made a massive difference to my health and wellbeing. I can't rely on what I have read or listened to in the past. I need regular input to remind myself of the truth I know and continue to learn and grow. 

The number one priority for healthy input into my life is the Bible. When I am regularly spending time in God's word, meditating on truth and applying it to my day, I am a more healthy person.

As important as nutritious input is limiting the amount of junk I allow my mind to consume. There were 'friends' I blocked on Facebook because of the controversial and argumentative content they posted. I set up time limits on social media accounts on my phone. I also limited the amount of news I watched. There is such thing as too much information for my mind to process, and guarding my heart against the avalanche of pain displayed in glorious high definition every day helped me cope.

Prioritise Health

In 2020 I learned to prioritise my health. We have one body to live in for our entire lives. One. And if we don't look after it, we have to live the remainder of our lives with the limitations of the brokenness we experience.

I have had to deal with some mental health struggles and stress-related illness before 2020. This struggle wasn't new. But it took on a whole new meaning last year as I suffered the consequences of a massive panic attack. I was pushing through the busyness and pressure, thinking I was dealing with everything pretty well, when my body crashed. After four days with chest pain, taking some heavy-duty pain killers and having a raft of tests, I was surprised I had a mental health problem rather than a physical one. I have never been so aware of how our body and mind are one, fully connected.

I am learning how to recognise mental and emotional pain as it manifests in my body in physical ways. I wish this were easier than it is. I find myself teary, crying for a silly reason, and I have to stop and ask myself, "What is my body trying to tell me by the way it is reacting to this?" I am continuing to learn ways to heal and refresh my heart when I become overwhelmed.

Grow Through what we Go Through

2020 has taught me to learn from my experiences more intentionally. Through the months of counselling after my panic attack, I learned to dig deep into the lessons life was trying to teach me. This doesn't happen automatically; it takes intentionality and hard work. I began to spend time sitting still in silence, listening to my thoughts, noticing my emotions, and crying out to God. I wrote pages and pages in my journal, articulating my thoughts and answering hard questions. It was exhausting, and tears stained many pages, but it was worth it. Stillness, thinking time, and journaling have become important parts of my mental health routine. When I fill all the gaps with distractions, reading and watching tv and scrolling through Facebook in every spare minute I have, my mental health declines.

Take Time for Transitions

This year has been a transitional year for me. I've finished working as a pastor, finished having children living with me to mother, finished living in a regular house to begin nomadic life in an RV—significant transitions. In the book, "Get Your Life Back," John Eldredge talks about the importance of transitions between special moments in our lives. Even taking a few moments to reflect and recharge between meetings or tasks can make a big difference in how we cope. With so many major changes happening, I was careful not to rush it. And in the end, COVID forced us to slow down the transition even further.

Even though our apartment lease finished at the beginning of October, I finished work five weeks earlier to give myself time to pack up our possessions and plan the next steps. At the end of the five weeks, when we were supposed to move into our caravan, there was a further delay. So, we rented a holiday apartment by the beach to wait for two more months. Now we live in our van, ready to travel around our beautiful country, we are parked on my parent's property waiting for school holidays to finish before we move on. This has been a wonderful time to get into a routine and learn how to live together in our new small space.

Rushing from one thing to the next is hectic and overwhelming. Life's transitions are often out of our control, and we have to hang on and keep up. Wherever possible, if you can influence the time-line, give yourself time to catch your breath when big changes come your way.

Let it Go

This year has taught me with stark clarity—we can't embrace the future without letting go of the past. We can't have everything, at least, not all at the same time. Murray and I have been nurturing a dream to travel around our country while we are young and healthy enough to climb the mountains and walk the canyons to enjoy the full experience travel offers. It was a wonderful dream, and we have enjoyed the planning, list-making and dreaming. This year, it became a reality. Taking hold of the dream meant letting go of other things we loved about our lives, which means real grief.

Giving up work, seeing our adult children settled independently from us, selling or storing almost all of our possessions, saying goodbye to family and friends and leaving our church family were all sacrifices we had to lay down, good things we had to give up. And there was grief in all of these things. It hurt. It still hurts. But, it is for a season, and without letting all of these things go, it simply isn't possible to embark on the adventure ahead. Now, I stare at a big map of Australia displayed on the wall in front of me and the blank pages of my 2021 calendar, and I'm ready to go!