Heart pounding.
Racing.
Shaking.
Can’t sleep.
Have you ever felt so anxious you just didn’t think you could face another day?
At college last year, that’s how our daughter felt. I am her mom, and there was nothing I could do to make the pain stop. Some boo boos need more than a band-aid and a kiss. I didn’t know if she’d ever come back from that dark place. Where was the brave little girl I raised? The one who was unafraid, who was a runner, and who loved art? In her place lived a paralyzed, scared, and lonely shadow of the girl I knew. When would my daughter return?
Isn’t it funny what we tell kids about college?
We tell them it will be the best years of their lives, that they will make the best friends they’ve ever had, and that they will enjoy freedom unlike anything they have ever known. And then we pack them up, set up their dorm room, and say good-bye. Our promises float away like little thought balloons. It takes nearly 200 hours of time spent together to make a new friend, and new experiences, even good ones, are an adjustment. Learning to live on our own, forge new study habits, and navigate the complicated relationships inherent in dorm life are no picnic.
No one tells us about these things.
And Christiana wanted to come home.
Truth be told, I didn’t want her to come home. I wanted her to tough it out and figure it out. But she couldn’t. She was paralyzed and traumatized and so coming home was inevitable. Thankfully, she stayed enrolled and this fall she moved into a new apartment with new roommates at a new school. I think she’s spent the night at our house maybe twice this entire first semester. Last year, she was driving from home to school (nearly two hours away) several times a week and sometimes having a panic attack before she even arrived.
Since then, a tremendous amount of growth has happened. In the fullness of time. When she (not me) was ready. (This did not happen overnight, and it did not happen without a lot of intervention, prayer, and help from a wide array of sources.)
Today’s WINSday on Wednesday is inspired by her journey and the path she’s taken to becoming the woman she is. Twenty years old, and I couldn’t be more proud of her. Rather than allow her past disappointment become a barrier to future success, she has instead decided to ask, “What’s next?”
These are her words from her heart for 2020.
2020 Goals
I woke up in the middle of the night with these four words on my heart:
Renew.
Peace.
Courage.
Significance.
All week I had been praying for God to give me a word for this New Year—something to work on or just a word that could be my focus for 2020. He wasn’t telling me anything. But then out of nowhere, these four words were my answer.
I have just come out of the hardest season of my life. Renew is a good word considering there is a lot that has been instilled in me that needs to be renewed. In the past year I struggled with so much anxiety. I am just coming out of this hard season, and I still harbor more fear than I’ve ever had in my life. I need to renew the peace and courage I used to have. I don’t want to live a life of fear. Fear is not from God.
I also want this next year to be peaceful. I am ready to renew that peace. I’ve been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. Everything stirs up fear. Things that used to be so easy for me, like traveling to a new place, have become hard. Right now, I would rather stay at home where everything is familiar than embark on something new. If you asked me right in this moment to go love on people in Kenya (a place I love), believe it or not, I might actually say no. Traveling around the world has been something I have loved my whole life. Kenya is by far my favorite country. Two years ago, I would have told you I was never coming home from there.
I am saying right now that I am committed to no longer living in fear. I am starting the journey right now to renew the peace and courage that once was thriving in my heart. I know my God can do that. He raised Jesus from the dead. That same spirit that turned death to life is alive in me right now. Imagine what all He can do in me!
The word significance is going to be my word for the decade. In this next ten years, I want to graduate college, get married, start a family, and who knows what else. I want to make sure that I am living a life of significance. Yes, I want to be successful too, but who cares in the end if I made a lot of money and did a lot of stuff for things that don’t matter. I want to change the world. I want to make a difference and the only way to truly do that is by living a life of significance. Day by day, I am committed to renewing my heart, to ridding it of fear and asking courage and peace to take its place.
Here’s to 2020!
If you missed our interview on Mission Driven Monday last year, you can catch up here.