As the year comes to a close I find myself looking back over 2020 and grieving. There was so much lost in our world: the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, the financial security of even more, many of our interactions with one another, and any sense of normal we had before all of this.

The grief feels especially real for our family as I consider all that we walked away from this year. Personally, what continues to hurt the most are the friendships that ended this year. I don’t have regrets on this, just a sadness that this was how it ultimately played out. We made the decisions we felt were right and then paid a huge personal toll in our community for it. The abrupt loss of it was staggering.

But I’m also realizing that maybe this had to happen in order for us to go where Jesus is ultimately taking us. The author Henry Cloud refers to this idea as “necessary endings.” He has this to say in his book with the same title.

The title of this post may cause you to believe I’m against ambition. Far from it. For those who know me personally, or especially those who know Michelle and I as a couple, you know that ambition is something we value considerably. I love working hard, pushing myself, and to quote the retail chain Lowe’s, “Never stop improving.”

For me, ambition is not about making more money or rising the ladder of influence. My friend Steve Carter recently shared a quote I keep thinking about: “When you anchor your life in Jesus, you have nothing to prove, nothing to lose, and nothing to hide.” I’m trying hard to live by that.

My ambition applies to weird things. I recently updated my Apple Watch (a “vintage” generation one) to the Apple Watch generation six that just came out. When I checked on the trade-in value for it they let me know that they would recycle it for me. There were quite a few improvements in those five iterations which I noticed immediately. One of them is how good the activity tracker has become.

I have a feeling that Thanksgiving might feel a bit strange to many people this year. This is normally the time we think of what we’re grateful for and often share it with our closest family and friends. But when it’s been a 2020 kind of year… gratitude may not be the first thing on our minds.

I’m not sure how much you are aware of your dreams when you sleep at night but I often dream vividly. It is not uncommon for me to have some amazing dream and then wake up with a sense of disappointment. In my dreams, I often get into fascinating conversations with people I’ve never met. We start new projects together or talk through ideas. Then I wake up bummed and realize I don’t actually know them.

Recently I woke up with a different feeling.