Always learning

Five lessons I learned in 2024

I am not going to bore you with the fact that 2024 was a pretty rough year for me; if you’ve been here through any of it, you already know. I am also not going to sugar-coat it and tell you I am focusing on all the good even though there was a lot of bad. That’s dishonest. I will always remember 2024 as the year I lost both of my parents, even though technically Daddy passed on December 30th of 2023. As they say in government work, close enough. They died within nine and a half months of each other and that’s a lot of loss in a short time.

But I am learning in my old(er) age to reflect on how things have gone and try to learn a few things that I can carry forward with me, because, barring my own untimely death, that’s the only direction I can go. So here are five things I learned in 2024 that I want to take with me on the journey.

1. God makes all things new, but he doesn’t wave a magic wand to do it.

Have you done any therapy—I mean the mental health kind? This month marks the end of my second full year, and despite it being the hardest thing I’ve ever done, I highly recommend it for everyone, even if you think you don’t need it. Literally everyone has something they can work through in therapy, apparently some of us more than others.

Probably the best thing I have gotten out of therapy so far is the understanding of some of the negative patterns I have been stuck in (people pleasing, for example) and the gentle push to work my way out of them. It feels selfish to not be a people pleaser, but is it really? (The answer is no, it’s not.) I’ve had to examine my own motivations for this behavior (and others) (sorry for all the parenthetical comments) and figure out which ones are godly and which are not serving me or anyone else well. Did I mention this is hard work?

So while I would love for (and have prayed for) God to snap his fingers and make all my issues instantly resolve, that’s not how he does it. Sometimes he sends us to therapy, and I’m thankful for my opportunity to go. He does make all things new; sometimes we have to participate.

2. Say the hard things.

Along the same lines, one of the things I have learned in therapy this year is to say the hard things. If I had to rank all my struggles in life, this would be at the very top. I have been a people pleaser since I was a child, always scanning the room to figure out how I should act and what I should say to make life most emotionally comfortable for everyone else. Don’t make waves. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t upset the apple cart. (Okay, I’ll stop now.) I have always felt like it is my job to manage everyone else’s emotions so no one has to be upset or angry or sad.

Who put me in charge of this, and what ever made me think I could actually accomplish such a monumental task? After two years of processing, I kind of understand how I wound up here, but I still shake my head at the preposterousness of it and that I lived that way for six decades.

It has taken me two full years of talking through my history and answering uncomfortable questions (thanks, E) to work up the courage to say a hard thing—just one—to someone I love. It was terrifying and I can still feel the tension in my chest and neck and shoulders just thinking about it. It did not go over well that day, and for days afterward. But eventually it was received and I was even thanked for saying it. I hope I never have to do that again, but at least now my brain and body know I can do it and no one will die and I will be a more honest person for having done it.

You don’t have to be nasty. God tells us to “speak the truth in love.” That means your motivation should be love, but don’t neglect speaking the truth. That is personal growth.

3. You get to choose your legacy.

I always loved going to my parents’ house; it was a museum of my life. You know why? Because they saved literally everything. Want to know what grade I got in English in third grade? No problem. Mommy had a file folder with every report card for every child for every year of school. Student reviews of Daddy’s science classes; I found the one I wrote on his chemistry class in 1978, as well as all those of my classmates. (I should have saved them for the next reunion.) The salt shaker with burn marks from the campfire. The little glass flowers I bought my mother on my fifth-grade trip to Williamsburg. The Mother’s Day card my brother colored at the Happy Day Nursery School in Glendora, California. The family silver we didn’t know existed. The etched-glass martini pitcher.

My parents left a lot of stuff, which has been divided among my brothers and me and the grandchildren. My share is stashed here and there around my house, and I see a lot of it on a daily basis. But it’s funny to me the things that catch my eye and stop my mind and heart: the worn blue hand towel my mother had in her bathroom right up to the end. The highball glasses we now drink kombucha out of. Her wedding rings that feel so heavy on my finger. Daddy’s old crank pencil sharpener mounted at the top of the basement stairs.

The silver will sit in the closet until it gets passed to one of my kids. The wedding rings will eventually be worn by one of Mommy’s granddaughters. I hope someone will want the pencil sharpener and will tell stories of Daddy having a perfectly sharpened pencil in every room, in every car, and one behind his ear because you never knew when you would need one and nothing irritated him more than a dull pencil.

But of all the things my parents left, I treasure their legacy the most. I am left with a heart full of memories—of happy family gatherings at my grandparents’ farm, of traveling the country with our little camper and the station wagon with the red canoe tied on top, of not knowing how to read the heavy hymnal but watching my mother play the organ while a congregation sang “The Haven of Rest.” Growing up, we knew that family came first and that helping your neighbor was a privilege you’d better not miss. We learned to appreciate the beauty and wonder of nature and how blessed it was to care for those around us.

Leave your children possessions if you want to. But know that what they will treasure most are memories of a loving family. Don’t work to gain things; work to love people.

4. You can lose weight over 60.

I am not any kind of professional when it comes to weight loss. I inherited really good genes from my Daddy that have kept me mostly at a healthy weight without a lot of effort my whole life. But 2024 changed that. Maybe it was all the driving back and forth between home and Northern Virginia, eating what we affectionately call “road food,” all the sitting at rehab and in hospitals and at assisted living, all the stress and all the not enough sleep. All the no time to get on a regular walking schedule.

Whatever the cause, I gained weight until I couldn’t wear 80% of the jeans in my closet and I refused to buy bigger ones. I was at my highest weight ever, not pregnant. I felt sluggish and like I couldn’t get out of my own way and I finally got disgusted enough to tackle it. And since I am not a fan of the fad diet, here’s what I did.

1. Prioritize protein. I focused on having a large helping of protein at every meal, and even for snacks if I needed something in between. Since I have half a cow in the freezer, this wasn’t that hard. I just had to think about it. I did not keep track of exact amounts, I just made sure I was eating more protein than anything else.

2. Eat smaller helpings of carbs, and make the carbs you do eat worth it. In other words, instead of each of you eating an enormous baked potato, split one with your spouse. (I know this is very sad. Potatoes and bread are my love language. But I decided I wanted to be a healthy weight more than I wanted potatoes.) Make your veggies nutrient-dense ones—darker colors are typically more nutritious—and eat more of them.

3. Snack on nuts, cottage cheese, berries. Protein bars are not the greatest, but they’re handy in a pinch. Watch out for artificial sweeteners that will give you cancer. When you feel hungry, drink some water and see if the feeling goes away.

4. Take a liver cleanse. I have no idea why this helps, but it made losing weight much easier than I anticipated it would be. If you’re a nutrition or weight-loss expert, please explain to us why this works.

5. Walk. I’ve had good success in the past lifting weights, but my shoulder doesn’t like it anymore, and I have tendinitis in my elbow. I would love to be a runner, but my neck won’t have it. So I walk. If all I have time for is 2 miles, that’s what I do. When I have time for 3 or 4 or 5, I go for it. And you don’t have to speed walk. Use a free app on your phone (I like Map My Walk) and work your way up to an 18- or 19-minute-mile pace, or whatever you can do without hurting. That’s all it takes, but you have to be consistent. I try to walk four times a week.

I’m sure I am oversimplifying this, but if you have no underlying health issues and you want to lose a few pounds, don’t let the “you can’t lose weight when you’re over 60” crowd discourage you. Set your mind to it and be patient. It took me almost three months to lose 15 pounds and I feel much better. (And I can wear all my jeans again.)

5. Stop.

Raise your hand if you’ve seen the movie You’ve Got Mail. Remember the scene at the very end when Kathleen Kelly is going to meet the mystery man who’s been emailing her (Joe Fox)? She comes out of her lovely brownstone, skips down the steps, and starts up the sidewalk on her way to the park, almost running in her adorable gray dress and cute flats. Then she realizes she is almost running and consciously slows herself down.

I feel like that is my life minus the adorable gray dress and cute flats. I rush from one thing to another before I suddenly realize how fast I am moving. This is most evident when Ben and I are walking across a parking lot and he is wearing cowboy boots. For whatever reason, he does not walk fast in them. Put workboots on him and he leaves me in the dust. But not in cowboy boots. In those he strolls.

I, however, am a fast walker, especially when it’s cold and/or raining, and he usually winds up saying, “You go on ahead. I’ll get there when I get there.” Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. It depends on how cold or wet I am.

Anyway, I was reminded recently that sometimes we just need to slow down, but sometimes we need to come to a full stop. Here’s an example.

When I take Hank out at bedtime, it’s dark. It’s darker where we live because there are no street lights and we neglected to put outside lighting on our house. (The things you don’t think of.) We also live surrounded by a decent amount of wildlife, so I always take a flashlight with me. If I’m going to be attacked by a bear, I want to see it coming.

One night last week I stepped out the side garage door with Hank and shined my flashlight ahead of me. With one foot in and one foot out of the garage, I was face to face with a little screech owl, sitting on the chest-high, wood fence rail that goes around the garden. He was no more than 3 feet from me and I stopped in my tracks. His big yellow eyes took me in for a moment, glanced down at Hank, blinked slowly, and looked back at me. I held perfectly still and said quietly, “Hey, buddy. What are you doing here?”

He continued to look at me, maybe calculating whether or not he wanted to go after Hank, and after a long 15 seconds of this stare-down, he flew up into the trees.

Have you ever had a very close encounter with wildlife? One where nothing was between you and the animal and you were aware of each others’ presence and neither of you moved? It’s pretty amazing all the thoughts you can think in that short span of time: What is he going to do? What is he thinking? He doesn’t look scared. Is he scared and I just can’t read his face? I’m not going to hurt you, buddy. I’m not sure where Hank is because it’s dark and I can’t see him and what do I do if this owl swoops toward him? I wish I had my camera but that would probably scare him off and also I’d need three hands. If I just hold really still will he stay here? Wouldn’t it be great if I could hold out my arm and he perched on it? How can I get him to come back? Is there a way to attract owls to your yard? Stock it with mice?

Did you know that owls fly pretty clumsily and slowly? I followed his flight to the trees with my flashlight and was surprised by this. Theirs is not an effortless gliding. It’s more of a lumbering through the air. And did you know screech owls are only about ten inches tall?

While I would say I’ve always loved owls, I’ve never had a close encounter with one. Slowing down would not have been enough for this. If I had continued out the garage door slowly, he would have flown off immediately.

I had to stop: stop moving, stop doing, stop everything that had been going on in the previous second. Whatever had been going through my mind—getting Hank to bed so I could put myself to bed and keep reading the book I’m currently interested in oh but don’t forget to get a roast out of the freezer on my way back in and did I remember to lock up the chickens?—had to instantly stop.

Do you know what happens when you stop like this? You become fully present in the right here, right now. Everything else vanishes and your focus becomes what is right in front of your face. All the distractions of life are gone and you are in one place: here, now, staring into the huge eyes of a little screech owl.

I don’t know if it was the communion with this owl or the fact that my brain was suddenly more focused on the present than it has been in a very long time, but the experience has stuck with me and I find myself trying to get it back. Every night when I take Hank out the garage door, I open it slowly in case my little buddy is there again. I want him to be there again.

I want him to teach me to stop.

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So many thanks for being here through 2024. I appreciate every person who uses a few minutes of their precious time to read the words I put in print. I hope in some way they are a blessing to you.