The year 2017 was coming to an end and if ever a girl was ready for it, that girl was me.

Goal planner—check. 

New sharpie pens—check. 

Date by myself at the coffee shop—check. 

Everything was in place. In 2017 I weaned my youngest baby, sent my oldest to a homeschool-hybrid kindergarten program, and my middle child to preschool—three big milestones in terms of both hours and attachment to mama. They were still home with me often; I was still tying a lot of shoes and breaking up my fair share of squabbles but 2017 was the first year I had a minute. We were two years past a hard diagnosis and finding our rhythm with a therapist we love and a preschool we felt very good about. We were settled in to the home we had bought the year before and it fit our family like a glove. Everyone was sleeping for 10 to 12 beautiful, glorious hours each night. We had put in five straight years of pregnancy and nursing and sleep training three babies and it felt like a changing of the guard. 2018 was going to be my year of amazingness. 

I arrived at the coffee shop, the one I hand picked for the occasion because they have a fireplace and wouldn't you know, the cozy chair by the fireplace was vacant, as if it were waiting just for me, knowing I had plans to make. I took out my fancy goal planner and new pens and started working through all of the guided exercises in the book: reflecting on the past year, making lists of gratitude, acknowledging the things that I wanted to do better. And then I came to the page I was most excited about: the big goals page. It had space for ten things I wanted to make happen in 2018 and let me tell you, there were things I wanted to make happen, and I wrote those goals down with a kind of new year resolve I had not experienced since becoming a mama because I finally had a minute! I wanted to write for a few specific publications, hit a few family budget goals, and finish some big personal projects. Year of amazingness, meet Katie.

(I have a feeling you know where this is headed).

In April of 2018 my husband told me one sunny afternoon that, “I think I am depressed. I need to see someone.” And he did, a wonderful counselor who is still a regular part of his life. 

In late July we met a young, homeless, pregnant woman and invited her in to our lives.

In October, that same woman called us on a Monday and asked if we could take her baby girl because she couldn’t keep her. Not pray about it and get back, but could we take her right that minute? We did.

On the day before Halloween I began throwing up approximately every two hours for the entirety of the day, and continued to do so until Christmas, thanks to the very unexpected blessing growing inside of me. I didn't even see my kids in a costume that year because I felt like if I opened my eyes I would just throw up again, so I kept them closed and stayed in bed, knees up to my chest and a blanket pulled over my shoulders.

What I am saying is, it was not the year of amazingness I had planned it to be.

But wouldn’t you know, the allure of those beautiful planners and a new pack of sharpie pens has been a sort of kryptonite for me for the last decade and at the end of 2018, with the addition of a two month old and a not easy pregnancy to our already good and full life with three kids, I still bought one, limitations be damned!

(You probably know where this is going, too).

Just last month I threw that very planner away with approximately 1.5 pages out of a hundred filled out because don’t nobody need two years worth of expensive, unused planners laying around mocking them. A friend recently asked me if I was working through a goal planner for 2020 and, having (finally) wised up the tiniest bit in the last year, I chuckled. “Nah. I don’t need any more evidence of all that I am not doing right now. The state of my kitchen will suffice.” 

The thing about me is, when it comes to all the resolve, reset, renew kind of things, I am here for them. I am that girl. I’ve done a word for the year, a verse for the year, and made a plan for the year. I’ve analyzed metrics and been determined to defy them, and that includes everything from my weight to the number of words I wrote down to our budget. I have consistently entered the month of January seeing all the ways I could be “better” and made a plan to be just that: better. But as 2020 drew nearer and brought with it my typical temptation toward tangible steps of improvement and lists I could check along the way, I didn’t come up with a word for the year so much as a phrase. With two different goal planners in my cart ready to checkout on Cyber Monday—I’m not saying I heard the Lord, but I might have—that phrase came to mind was the least inspiration and most realistic one yet:

Save yo’ money, girl. It just ain’t your year. 

(Abandons cart at checkout.) 

So here we are, the first month of the new year and for the first time in a decade, I have no plan. I do however, have a lot of in front of me: a husband I love and whom I love serving, five kids who have vastly different needs but share at least one: snuggling up with their mama. I have a home and a job and a community to steward well. I have our local church to invest in. There are certainly things I want to accomplish, but for me, not writing them all down with the expectation that I will meet them has been freeing. It has relegated all the big dreams to the unplanned for spaces that I know from experience God will provide when I take care of the first things first. I’ll still write, and I’ll still read, and I’ll still look back on this year and think “wow God, look at what you did, look how you multiplied my efforts!” 

It may not be my year for a dozen big, shiny and glittery things, but it most certainly is my year for a million little, unseen things. Only one of those gets the hype and the likes and the applause, but both are good.

So for all the mamas who know this ain’t your year, who are showing up with no plan other than just showing up and wanting to do your best, here’s a high five and fist pump from me to you. That’s enough, you know, showing up and doing your best—it is no small thing to do either of those. You know I believe goals are good, but I’ve also learned that grace is better—and no matter what my year does or does not include, Jesus already accomplished everything that really matters.