Looking back at 2025

letting go. accepting the call to something new, and hard.

2025 was a hard year for me. I want to scold myself for saying so. I should be happy. I shouldn’t feel so sad. There were a lot of good things in 2025, but for whatever reason as I look back my heart is aching with the minor keys of the hard and heavy, unresolved, seemingly futile things.

I went into 2025 feeling sad that I couldn’t find the journal I’ve been keeping for twenty-one years. A journal I only write in at the end of the year. I started it the year I was about to give birth to my second son, and the year my husband told me he wanted a divorce. I was deep in the waves of joy and sorrow and God was walking with me. I was full of hope.

Every Christmas my body remembers that bittersweet anniversary of the birth of my son, the near loss of my marriage, and the promise of Christ being God with us. This is such a sacred time for me. I’ve turned my house upside-down, and inside-out trying to find that journal to no avail. So as I entered 2025 I felt a sense of loss, but I bought a new journal and believed the Lord was saying 2025 would be a year of being weaned. His word to me was Psalm 131:

Lord, my heart is not proud;
my eyes are not haughty.
I do not get involved with things
too great or too wondrous for me.
Instead, I have calmed and quieted my soul
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like a weaned child.

Israel, put your hope in the Lord,
both now and forever.

In January I wrote in that journal, “I still hold my hands out to James, Connor and Ryland, and hold them up to the Lord. I still long to see them walking with you, Lord. I want to be able to say, ‘Magnify the Lord with me. Let us exalt his name together,’ and hear them say, “Yes!” But I let go of trying to figure out how or when.”

I started 2025 sad about having to let go of that journal. Then in January one of my sweetest ever female goats, pregnant and due to have her babies was killed by a coyote. And in March and April we lost two more does to coyotes, as well as our entire flock of chickens. This year started off feeling like I couldn’t keep anything I held dear. Letting go, or being weaned felt like futility.

But in the midst of the losses, God called me to something new.

In January I began working on a book proposal at the encouragement of an acquisitions editor at BakerBooks who I connected with on Twitter. In May my proposal was accepted and I signed a contract for a book tentatively titled: Exile in Marriage- Liturgy for Living With An Unbelieving Spouse. I say this was a calling from God because although I love words and have always wanted to write a book, this is not the book I had hoped to write. But I felt, and still feel, compelled to encourage women and men (there are many men in these kinds of marriages too) that they can and should live out their faith, even in their marriages with unbelieving spouses.

So, with my husband’s encouragement, my mind has been singularly focused on writing this book since May.

In the months between May and December I have spent more time talking with my husband about our marriage, Christ, the gospel, his beliefs and mine, than I have our entire marriage. It’s been good, but also hard. I can’t fix this, force a conversion or figure out how to make my husband want to worship and follow Jesus with me. I’ve had to let go even more.

I’ve also done more traveling and spent more time with my adult sons and their serious girlfriends this year. We went to New York City for a week in July, and have been playing games and eating dinner together every Monday night. In our time together I ache to see or hear any sign of the seeds of faith taking root. And I’ve been given much to pray about as I’ve practiced listening more. I’ve felt like a foreigner so many times at the table or in the activities we do together. I feel like I’m the only one who wants to pray, read the scriptures, and look for the goodness of God in the land of the living.

I’ve felt like an exile politically with family members I never thought I would feel scrutinized by because I don’t cheer on the POTUS and his policies. My faith in Jesus has me feeling not at home with any political party, even the one that thinks it’s the Christian political party.

I’ve also been a vagabond in the Church, not committing to any one local church in 2025. I’ve struggled to commit myself to any one church because of fear and fatigue. I’m afraid of losing a church family like I lost my last one… with a divide that hurt many. And I have shrunk back from doing the good and messy work of building relationships in a local church, submitting to the church’s leadership because of the way the suburban churches are structured and my fear that just like the last one, when the pastor leaves it will fall apart. I’ve been convicted by the Holy Spirit many times this year that I need to commit myself somewhere, knowing there are problems there, and problems in me. I’ve been slow to obey. But in November I attended a church with friends celebrating their daughter’s baptism, and decided this is the church I’m going to throw my life in with. Carmen Joy Ime’s book, Becoming God’s Family, was a tremendous help to me in executing on the decision to commit myself somewhere.

The week before Thanksgiving began the whirlwind of crises involving my mom’s health. Four hospitalizations, two flights and two long road trips later, my sister and I moved our mom into my sister’s living room on hospice, converting it into a min-apartment for my mom. I had to let go of being there for my sister and my mom and return to my home in Arizona. But during those weeks I witnessed the beauty of the work of serving one another.

While I was in California moving my mom from hospital to nursing home to my sister’s home, my husband called to tell me our entire flock of chickens (most of which I hatched and raised myself) were killed by some predator that got into their coop. More loss.

But the Sunday before Christmas one of my pregnant does gave birth to beautiful twin kids— a buckling and a doe. We named them Buddy (as in the elf), and Cindy Lou (as in “No one should be alone on Christmas!”).

So I guess as I look back over 2025, it was a weaning year. I’m being trained to eat meat, forgive, listen, speak up even when misunderstood, let go, embrace, try, and keep trying to let Jesus teach me to love another well.

I’m going into 2026 feeling very Ecclesiastical.

“Go, eat your bread with pleasure, and drink your wine with a cheerful heart, for God has already accepted your works. Let your clothes be white all the time, and never let oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife you love all the days of your fleeting life, which has been given to you under the sun, all your fleeting days. For that is your portion in life and in your struggle under the sun. Whatever your hands find to do, do with all your strength, because there is no work, planning, knowledge, or wisdom in Sheol where you are going.” (Ecclesiastes 9:7-10)

“But beyond these, my son, be warned: there is no end to the making of many books, and much study wearies the body. When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is this: fear God and keep his commands, because this is for all humanity. For God will bring every act to judgment, including every hidden thing, whether good or evil.” (Ecclesiastes 12:12-14)