10 reflections on 2024

Death, relationships, ADHD, and Blue Bell ice cream, to name a few.

This year, I’m not setting a lot of goals or intentions for 2025. Instead, I found it helpful to look back on what has already happened. I hope I will keep these things in mind in the new year.

1. The older I get, the more people I know will die, and death is sad.

This year, three people passed away who I knew personally. One was my age. The other two were old enough to be my parents (one was, in fact, my husband’s father). When our friend Travis passed away on May 1 after complications with his health, I felt extremely disoriented. People our age aren’t supposed to die from health issues. But I am nearing 40, and I realized that the people I know who are my age are likely only going to get less healthy, because we are all a little bit closer to death each day. The other two men who died—my father-in-law and a founding member of our church—lived relatively long lives, but they were still deaths. For those who knew them, it meant the end of a relationship. I was reminded again that this is not how the Lord intended it. People aren’t supposed to die.

2. I will never regret investing in relationships.

I was praying for the people in our small group before I started this post and all I could say was, “Lord, thank you for these people.” He has put people in our lives who are truly like family. I then began jotting down a list of other relationships that I or my family invested in this year, and I am so thankful for them. In no particular order, they are:

• Friends from a former church who we met up with for coffee while we were in Columbia for Christmas—they are also in full-time ministry and we did some serious trauma bonding

• My friend Alexis-who-lives-in-Texas and our friendship that takes almost entirely over Marco Polo

• Our group of friends who we see every year over Labor Day weekend—we have now met every year for 10 years, and every year children are added and relationships are deepened

• Friends who came and stayed with us—we don’t have a huge house, but we loved squeezing entire families into our bonus room, eating meals together, showing them around town, and staying up talking for much later than 38-year-olds should stay up

• My “Ministry Wives Zoom” — a group of 5 of us who started meeting over Zoom in January 2023, and we have met every month since to pray for each other, share trials, and encourage each other

3. Our house is now 33% teenagers.

This year our second-oldest child turned 13, and now we have two teenage boys in our house along with our 7 and 4-year-old. This was our first year with both boys in marching band, me dropping them off at a friend’s house whose parents I had never met, and seeing both of their personalities continue to develop. They earned money mowing yards in our neighborhood and babysitting, they were extremely helpful around the house, they enabled me to work from home this summer, and they are trying to figure out the world. I have had to apologize and repent to them many times this year. We are in brand new territory. May God give us grace for the years ahead.

4. Ministry is always a little bit hard, and sometimes it’s really hard.

I never want to paint a despondent picture of ministry life, but it is a unique experience and you’re dealing with people, who are all sinners. You are also a sinner. When two or more sinners collide, it can be messy. So “normal” ministry life can be hard—people leaving your church, people visiting but not staying, conflict between church members, conflict between leaders and church members, the children’s check-in iPad not working, finding volunteers. Put a bunch of people in ministry in a room and all of them can talk about these things for hours. But this year we also got hit with a situation that was above and beyond the normal “hard.” It consumed our whole family, it affected our whole church, and there is still pain and grief in the aftermath. It has also affected our kids—two of them have cried real tears in the past few weeks. I don’t want to live in despair, but I need to remind myself that these things are hard and have been hard, because otherwise I am tempted to ask myself why I am not sleeping well sometimes or why I have felt off for the past several months.

5. It’s almost always worth it to say true things to those who need to hear it.

This was a year of me gaining confidence to say things that I believe the Lord wanted me to say. They were said mostly in private conversations or correspondence, and I agonized over the wording and tone. In almost every case, what I said was not received in the way I hoped it would be. I remain open to the possibility that I got it wrong. But I do not regret what I have said, and I hope I can keep saying true things when they need to be said.

6. Effingham County, Georgia, feels like home, and it’s not as painful to go back to Columbia as it was the first few years.

We moved to Georgia in March 2020, so we’re coming up on 5 years here. This year, finally, when I went back to Columbia, which was my home for more than 20 years, I did not feel deep heartache. There are many people and places that I love there, and I miss them. But now, when I am in Columbia, I think about our home in Georgia.

7. Everyone should watch Call the Midwife.

I hope to write more in the future about media that shows kindness when you don’t expect it and why I think those are the best kinds of media to consume, but for now, if you haven’t watched this show, go ahead and start it. (I found out recently that my mom has watched the entire series three times.)

8. My husband might have ADHD.

Don’t worry, I’ve already talked about this with him. Why this mattered this year is that it gave me more empathy for Christian and how different our brains are. Can I get annoyed by his behavior based on how his brain works? Absolutely—he could say the same about me. It is a sanctifying aspect of our marriage. But for many years, I thought everyone’s brains were exactly the same and it didn’t make sense to me why he would make certain decisions if his brain was telling him the same things mine was. Learning more about ADHD and seeing adjustments I could make to how I communicated with him was helpful. It also took away a lot of the annoyance I had when he forgot things or I had to remind him of something more times than I felt like I needed to. I hope to keep learning how to love him better.

9. I have a lot of really good systems in place.

Sometimes when I am struggling, I think that if I just make a new system or try some other way to do something I already do, it will help whatever funk I’m stuck in. This year I realized that the systems I have work. (If you’re curious, the ones I use daily or weekly are: You Need a Budget, Greenlight, Dropbox, Plan to Eat, Todoist, Google Calendar, TODY, and Notion.) These systems cover our finances, keeping the house clean, our family calendar, work, my own personal to do list, and my hobbies. Truly, what else is there? I don’t need any new systems. I either need to use the systems I already have, or recognize that I’m in a season where I don’t have the mental space to utilize one of the systems I already have. In that case, I need to be kind to myself and also recognize a new system is only going to be a cruel taskmaster and will not fix the funk. Sometimes the funk remains.

10. My favorite weekly rhythm continues to be an at-home date night with Christian.

The liturgy of our date night involves some kind of delicious, cheese-based food that is not a regular part of our diets, two Coke Zeros each, a good show or movie (for many months it has been Call the Midwife), and the benediction is always Blue Bell ice cream. Favorite flavors this year were Oatmeal Creme Pie, Christmas Cookies, and Chocolate Peanut Butter Truffle.

I’d love to hear from you. What reflections have you had on the past year? What do you hope to take with you into the new year?