Telling Time

"In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord" ~ Isaiah 6:1

Recently, I was reading Isaiah 6, and I was struck by the contrast in the opening verse. Isaiah kicks off this passage about an amazing vision of God he experienced that led to his calling as a prophet by saying it happened "In the year that King Uzziah died". Now, in his time period, describing a well-known event that also happened that year was a great way for listeners to understand when he had this vision. The year designations we have now weren't around back in the time of the prophets because they're based on when Jesus came, which was hundreds of years after the time of Isaiah. However, even in the 21st century, we can fall into this same pattern of telling time. A few examples of this from my own life:

• 2004: In the year both my grandmothers died, I got my kitten Angel and went to a wonderful church camp.
• 2012: In the year I was in a scary car accident, I went to Scotland and started a job I love.
• 2016: In the year my friend Katherine died, I successfully voted for the president and appeared on a local news show to talk about my trip to Vancouver the year before.

So why do we keep doing this? I think the answer, at least in my life, is that sometimes the hard things make more of an impression on me than the good. My grief over Grandma Rohmeyer's death led to a depression that almost destroyed me. While I miraculously walked away from that car accident, it left me with fears I have to explain, a bum knee that flares up randomly, and near-constant headaches, with at least a few each year that alternate between being blinding and dizzying. When Katherine died, my confidence as a writer did as well. Additionally, since she died of cancer, the months before were filled with anxiety warring with hope. I was so sure that she would beat it that I refused to even consider the possibility of her death until just before it actually happened.

While I know there are probably years like these in your life as well, I would urge you that whenever possible, look for the good in your life, and define your time by the good things rather than the bad. So for me, 2019 was the year my mom was declared clear of cancer, or the year I made my first online Etsy sale, or maybe even the year I met and wrote a poem about the Poet Laureate Emeritus of Kansas, but not the year my wonderful boss had to quit or the year my anxiety returned full force. So how will you define your 2019? I pray that you, like me, can find something good to define it by, but even if you can't, I pray you can still find some good from the past year to remember.