5 Lessons I Learned in My 44th Year

Maybe it’s because my birthday comes so close to the start of the new year, but there’s just something about turning a year older that makes me reflect on the past year. I like that final glance backwards before moving forwards. A proverbial looking at the sunset in the rearview mirror, if you will. (Apparently, I even wrote about it in 2016!)

So here, in no particular order, are the 5 lessons I learned in 2024:

“Where will you be in 5 years?” is a useless question. If you had told me in 2019 that in 2024 I would leave the company I had worked at for nearly 20 years, I would tell you that doesn’t seem quite right. If you then told me that I would leave a church where I had found community and healing to be a part of a new church plant, I would say that you must be talking about a different Brandy. And then if you told me that both Mike and I would be seminary students, I would have rolled on the floor laughing. Yet, all those things happened in 2024. This year I experienced so much change. Much of it was tinged with grief. Some of it was freeing. Some of it was terrifying. And every bit of it needed to happen.
Running towards something is so much better than running away from something. There have been so many seasons of my life when I have been tempted to run away from things — jobs, relationships, conflict. This was a year filled with running towards things. It felt different. Instead of fear, there was hope. Instead of exhaustion, I found energy.
Make decisions from love and not fear. This is very closely connected to #2, but a very wise person told me this year that I needed to make decisions from a place of love, not fear. That has stuck with me all year, and there have been so many times that I teetered on the edge of a decision and asked myself that question. I have made a lot of decisions out of fear in my life — fear of abandonment, fear of loss, fear of scarcity. This year, I tried to make as many decisions as I could out of love — love for others, love for my family and love for self.
Finding “your people” is life-changing. I feel like this year was one of me really settling into community. I’m married to someone who knows and loves me. I have friends in my life who feel like family. I have a writing group that feels like a salve for my soul. I have peers in my doctoral program who I connected with quickly and deeply. I am surrounded by a church family who cares about loving others well. I have maintained relationships even as I have left jobs and places of worship. It’s not always been easy. But it has always been rich and rewarding.
Hold your hopes in open hands. This one kind of sums up everything else. This year has been one where dreams deferred have finally come to fruition — but rarely in the ways that I would have expected. The details are still tender, but there has been a lot of healing of wounds, and a lot of imagination for how God is at work. The stories are still unfolding. I’m just trying to remember that holiness and creativity are deeply intertwined.

As I step into 45, I’m excited for what this next year holds. I pray my sacred imagination can keep up!