The last night of 2025. I shall be in bed well before midnight, Lord willing and the creek don't rise. But for the moment it's just me, a cozy blanket, my laptop, the Christmas tree lights, and the whine of the refrigerator fan.
And me, well, I'm looking back at 2025. It's been a heck of a year and that's for sure. Transition and change, romance and heartbreak, hope fulfilled and hope deferred. Growth and pruning and dizzying learning curves.
It's the year in which I finally dared to wear jeans that fit, pierced my ears (after YEARS of wanting to; I'm still so happy with the results), regained my love of pretty dresses, collected a few more professional certifications, became healthier (and chubbier) than ever before, fell in love and lost that love, and gained a deeper awe and appreciation for the holiness, humility, tenderness, and creativity of my heavenly Father.
This was a year in which I experienced loss deeper than felt I could handle, but then discovered that somewhere along the years of healing and growth, my heart had gained an unexpected capacity and resilience. I wept deeply, fury-hiked trails as only a hurting soul can, journaled copious pages, devoured scripture, and discovered that joy and beauty had not left the world, but has quietly renewed, grown, and become more. I persistently invited Jesus into some of my deepest, darkest, most shameful parts of my soul and life, and He came with gentleness, honor, humor, tenderness, and healing, and patiently changed me in ways I hadn't anticipated.
Human healers, too, joined the story, and offered therapies, tools, nutrition plans, stretches, supplements, tinctures, and hope, leading to physical and emotional healing I didn't know I needed or was available. I'm still amazed at this; truly God is creative and wonderful in the variety of healing means that are available to us.
And coworkers... I don't know how one woman gets so many great coworkers in a single lifetime, but I've had and have some of the best. The teams I worked with this year are fabulous. Across three different organizations and several specialties, they exemplify professionalism, excellence, compassion, growth, and building up people to be all that God meant them to be. (On the Facebook version of this post, I noted that I want to start tagging individuals, but there's a 99 person limit on how many people you can tag, and that wouldn't be enough!)
It's a year in which my heart stretched across the world, but my body stayed US-bound (although I had several domestic trips). A year in which I realized that I have friends literally all over the world, a year in which I woke at 3 am to pray for friends and later discovered they were under drone attack at that time, a year in which my heart broke a bit from second and third hand trauma as dear ones give their heart and soul and tears to care for the hurting and traumatized and displaced both at home and abroad.
Some of the story of this year is not to be told here, but to be quietly held and pondered in my own heart. If we meet in person, and you buy me enough coffee (hint hint), you might get to hear some of those portions of the story! But for the moment, I'm going to bed. Happy New Year!