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How to have a truly happy new year.

For the first time in years, I don’t remember my New Year’s resolution from January. Usually, I write it down in my journal or on a note I stick to my mirror. There’s been many of those dog-eared sticky notes from years past. The year of contentment. Speaking life. We passed pancakes across the breakfast table on January 1st this year. “What do you want from 2018?” I can’t remember my answer. I know what I didn’t want though. I didn’t want to walk into her office and share the parts of my life I’m inclined to hide. I didn’t want to Facetime her the day after she delivered her baby that never breathed. I didn’t want to spend four months wondering how I’d walk into her house on Christmas day and see her empty chair. I didn’t want to go on another first date that led nowhere. We sit across from each other in a little coffee shop in Colorado, picking at a charcuterie board. “When I think about all of the things I have left to go through,” her voice cracks....
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He takes my breath away.


“The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1:21).”

While she reads the words that Job affirmed thousands of years ago, I’m back in student housing with boxes of textbooks and dishes piled around me, wiping my eyes furiously.

The future is as daunting as the boxes I have to move.

Where will I find friendships as deep as the three I have across the hallway?

The Lord takes away.

I’m back in the hospice, reading her poetry aloud and swapping memories.

Where will I find another confidante who loves me as unconditionally as her?

He takes her breath away.

But it’s like she says to me, a few weeks before they unplug her oxygen tanks. “Kate, this year has been filled with the greatest blessings in my life.”

It takes my breath away.

The way the Lord gives. Six months later, we’re all in Kentucky together. “It’s funny,” she says. “I think our friendship has grown even deeper since we’ve lived apart.”

And three years later, we all stand in peach bridesmaid dresses, and share a speech about late-night prayer messages and WhatsApp texts and phone calls that come from thousands of miles away. Distance has deepened our love.

The Lord gives.

And I call him late on a Wednesday night, because he knows what it feels like to live without her too. “I love you,” he says. And I remember how we used to never say that to each other.

With her gone, we see the things we have.

And every passing year, with its passing sorrows, keeps bringing greater blessings.

Loss is always present.

But so is the grace He keeps giving back.

“And the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before (Job 42:10).”




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