Reflection Over 2023:

This year was a big year.  I would say it has been one of the biggest years of change for me personally.  It is maybe second to the year of 2014 which was the year I graduated from high school and started college.  This year, I finished my fourth year of teaching, and I started a new job at a local nonprofit in Cedar Falls.  I moved the boxes in my Buffalo Center apartment to my new Cedar Falls apartment.  I packed up my classroom and my lesson plans and moved to a new place where I now write financial literacy plans for all grades as opposed to my Spanish plans for high schoolers. 

I went to college at the University of Northern Iowa (Go Cats!) which is in Cedar Falls, Iowa, so even though I had lived in this town before, I wasn’t very involved in the community.  I was too busy being involved in my college community.  The nonprofit I work for, mostly serves Waterloo families, which is a city connected to Cedar Falls, so I have also tried really hard to get involved in that community as well.   I try to be involved when I am working, but now I have also gotten really involved in my church community, enrolled in a community choir, and am volunteering in other organizations throughout the area.

I knew when I graduated college that I had a passion and a dream to one day work in a nonprofit full time.  I am glad this dream has come true.  It was scary.  I knew the students at my school, I knew my coworkers, I knew people that were friends in the area I was in, but I also knew I really wanted to move on and try a different path.  I have learned so much and developed so many different skills through this job.  I have become more creative in lesson planning and in other ways to problem solve.  I love this job.  I really love the kids I get to serve.  I love getting to know and work with the families, and I love going out in the community of Waterloo.  I am very happy I made this switch in 2023.  

The other big moment for me in 2023 was writing and publishing my devotional book. This had been a lifelong dream of mine.  I had always wanted to write and publish a devotional book.  When I was a young child, I would take a blank journals and write devotions for my family and friends to read daily.  I had forgotten about that, until my friend Tiffani reminded me she had one of those devotional journals from me from many years ago.  She had kept the journal this whole time.  The book published this year is called, Psalm 66: Praise Amidst Hardship and Joy. 

The low point of this year was saying goodbye to certain jobs.  Specifically, I am very sad I had to say goodbye to my athletes in cross country and I didn’t complete another summer at the Bridge of Storm Lake.  I had worked there for seven summers, and the Bridge and the community of Storm Lake meant so much to me.  I missed the summer being with the kids and some of my absolute best friends that are there.  Goodbyes are hard, and the months of May and June were both exciting, but also incredibly hard for this reason.  I don’t need to have the stress of moving and the tears over moving away anytime in the near future. 

While this year has been awesome, I do know there are many things I can work on for this next year.  I have been struggling a bit with insecurity and jealousy at times throughout my life.  I am constantly working on this and am trying to improve.   I also can sometimes get too focused on achieving items on my checklists as opposed to really focusing on the people around me.  I have been working harder at making sure not to overfill my schedule, so I actually can focus on the people in my life, but in the year of 2024, I really want to meet with others on a regular basis to really care about them and talk with them about their lives and their relationship with Christ.  I just need to make sure I am focused on them, and not the other items going on in my life.  

I always want to encourage others to spend time reflecting on their previous year.  Being able to reflect on what good happened, maybe some bad, achievements, and things to work on, can only help improve you for the next year.  It can also be a way to stay constantly reflective and believe in yourself enough for future growth.  I also know sometimes we as people need to practice gratitude and joy.  It is important to make sure we remember our joyful moments from the year we just had.  

Now I want to end this blog post with my verse for the year of 2024.  This verse is Jeremiah 17:8, “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him.  They will be like a tree planted by the water, that sends out its roots by the stream.  It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green.  It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”  I really love this verse for many different reasons, one being about having trust in God, but another is because I love the idea of looking to the year of 2024 as a tree.  The nonprofit I work at and have fallen in love with has a main symbol of a tree.  This symbol will hopefully be one to help me focus on growth for the year of 2024.