How to Remember a Year

by on December 24, 2020

a hand holding a pen and writing in a journal

How do we remember a year well, particularly a year that many of us may not want to look back and reflect upon? What is there to gain from remembering 2020? In the final podcast episode of the year, Dan and Rachael have a conversation about the necessity of engaging and learning from this tumultuous year and share their answers to three, reflective questions: What haunts me? What comforts me? What thrills me?

Quotes

“What are we to become and learn and engage as a result of having lived […] one of the most tumultuous years I’ve ever lived on this earth?” Dr. Dan Allender

“There is a lot of power in remembering, especially in taking stock, remembering in a kind of way that there is some discernment or wisdom involved. I do think there is something that these cycles of ending and beginning give us an opportunity both to remember out ebenezers or places where beyond all possibility God showed up and was faithful to provide […] and I think there is also a power in remembering where things didn’t go well and what we learned through suffering and what it reveals to us.” Rachael Clinton Chen

“We cannot move into the future with any sense of true, Biblical hope if we’ve not allowed ourselves to engage the past—we are doomed to repeat the past if we don’t engage it.” Dr. Dan Allender

“For me there is so much, both that is exposing and revealing systems that have been in place and then there’s a haunting that there is also new trauma playing out that is compounding old trauma and we don’t know yet the impact because we’re still in it, and that is very haunting as a trauma specialist to be in a collective trauma moment and not yet know what the impact will be for many years to come.” Rachael Clinton Chen

“As much as I invite people to grieve, it’s not easy for me to let my body and heart come to tears, and I think when you spend a lot of your day and week and month engaging other people’s grief it’s a reservoir that at times I fear entering.” Dr. Dan Allender

“I think in seasons like this we have an opportunity to be disrupted in ways that bring about the kingdom of God and the ways its most meant to be manifested on this earth, that the Spirit maybe has a little more room to move in our lives because we are so aware of how much we are in need of God.” Rachael Clinton Chen

“That kind of moment as I look back over a whole year and go, ‘Oh my gosh, I need the reminder again that God shows up even in the midst of a pandemic.’” Dr. Dan Allender

“Jesus is still capable of delighting our hearts and there is beauty even in the midst of profound brokenness that reminds us that we are meant for love.” Rachael Clinton Chen

Resources