The last time I saw a decade change I was at the very beginning of my 20s, a broke college student, and broken in many ways. I was finding freedom in Christ, possibly for the first time, and I was exploring freedom as “an adult” in the world, as I spent the first month of 2010 studying abroad.
When I returned home from London at the end of January, I had to buy a new battery for my MacBook. In the Apple store, I ran into an acquaintance from college, a guy named Jason, and we awkwardly greeted each other, and I asked him how his JanTerm was (I later realized he didn’t have a JanTerm, since he’d graduated from Samford in 2008…whoops!). Over the course of the next 9 months, we’d become friends, went on some dates, eventually become boyfriend and girlfriend, and ultimately, we fell in love.
That chance meeting in the first month of the 2010s set the course for the decade ahead. Each year brought exciting adventures as well as challenges, heartache, and even some tragedy. It seems as if every two years something huge happened — we got married (2012), started the adoption process (2014), welcomed our first child into our family (2016), and then our second (2018). In the middle of all of this I graduated from college, we bought two houses, accepted new jobs, started businesses, saw new parts of the country, changed churches, met new friends, enjoyed old friendships, became parents, welcomed new family members, and said goodbye to loved ones, grew a lot, made mistakes, learned to love God more, became kinder humans, had many, many emotions, and ultimately, we lived a lot of life.
Now, at the threshold of 2020, a new decade is before me. What in the world will it bring? If I had to describe the 2000s in one word, it would be self — I loved myself first and most (not always in a good way), I cared most about me, and, many times, I had an overall disregard for the way my decisions, words, and actions would effect others. I mean, I was a teenager and college student, and I probably wasn’t always as self-obsessed as I remember, but a lot of the time I was. The word I would choose for the 2010s would probably be love — I learned to love others more than myself (becoming a parent is hard like that), and I learned more about God’s love and how it should manifest in my life and family.
I’m excited to see what I’ll look back over the 2020s and think, but I’m also a little nervous too! The next time I write something like this, my kids will be 13 and 11 — that’s absolutely nuts! My prayer is that we’ll learn to love and serve one another in a way that glorifies the Lord, that we’ll make lots of amazing memories together, and that when hard times inevitably come, I hope and pray we’ll rely on God’s strength in our weakness and lean on each other in our time of need. I pray that we see our kids come to faith, that our marriage would grow deeper, and our faith become stronger.
Welcome, 2020.
My family on one of the last days of the decade. It’s funny how the decade began with people I’ll probably never see again, but ended with the absolute loves of my life who have had a bigger impact on me than anyone else ever will.
