Farewell, You Strange Year...

 

One year ago today, I sat with a blank bucket list in front of me and wrote out some dreams for 2024. (When I say “blank bucket list,” I mean that the page before me had prompts for me to fill in some blanks.)

            A few days ago, I pulled it back out to see how I did. There wasn’t much middle ground. I either totally succeeded or totally failed in the dreams I committed in ink to a sheet of paper.

            They were “just” dreams, of course. Nothing of eternal significance hinged on any of them. But the year was a strange one. There were many big, unexpected things that smashed into our lives with zero warning, leaving little room for preparation.

            But as I sit today and say goodbye to this strange year of ours, I celebrate the good and grieve the hard.

            We didn’t get to visit any new-to-us Indiana counties, which is a sad loss for my 2024, dreams, but we did go to four new states, and I had only dared to hope for two. 

            But regardless of where we did and did not get to go for this bucket list of mine, we did have some beautiful adventures this year. We were able to go on some fun dates and spend time together, and that is truly my favorite part anyway. I think two of our favorite dates this year were the ice sculpting festival and the RV show. Those were two really fun (and free!) evenings.

            I didn’t read one of the fiction series I wrote down to read, but I did read 33 books – some of which left a life-impact on me, and for that I’m grateful. The Lord ended up being more interested in my growth than my fiction-reading entertainment, and I welcome that. I am so thankful for all I learned from the pages of books this year!

            I did accomplish the increased health goals I set out to accomplish, and I’m proud of the hard work and perseverance that went into that. As I work to go forward now, I am seeking to continue to learn how to create healthy meals that are both tasty and good for us – and figure out what/when/where/how a feasible and consistent workout plan looks like for us. I’m learning that what matters most is being active now so I can be active in 30, 40, 50 years!

            I did complete the capsule wardrobe adventure and love everything I learned from that. It also changed my perspective on shopping and “stuff-owning” in general. This is carrying over to other parts of our lives, and I welcome that too!

            I explored new routines – some of which I kept and some of which I didn’t. I know that as Ryan and embark on our new vocational roles, those routines are going to change again, and possibly often. Perhaps one of the greatest gifts I learned this year was how to hold the routines a bit more loosely.

            I didn’t up my latte-making game, I didn’t bring back playing the piano, I didn’t finish writing another book…but I did work on a whole bunch of things within my heart that I never expected I would have to tackle this year.

            2024 will forever hold two extremes for me. On one hand, it was a hard year for the soul, filled with many hurts, betrayal (not from Ryan), and wounds that will take years to fully heal. I won’t miss those things. On the other hand, it was a beautiful year that brought joy, proof that I am stronger than I even knew, and healing I’ve prayed for a long time to know. I am so grateful for those things.

            No year ever goes fully as planned, so I can’t be surprised that this one fell into that category. And every year goes away, so both the good and bad go out the door with it as we bid farewell to 2024.

            I’ve planned and dreamed for the year ahead just like I did for this one, and I know some parts of it are likely to take place as I hope and others will be surprisingly hard. It’s just how the years go.

Updates on Dreams and Goals for December 2024

 

It has been great accountability for me this year to share my monthly dreams and goals with you and then get to follow up to offer the hits and misses on how said goals actually went.

            Here are my final updates on dreams and goals for 2024!

ONE: Mail Christmas cards and letters. I think this was my worst year ever in terms of sending out cards and letters. I’ve ordered our cards from Shutterfly for years, but this year it felt like their prices had pretty much doubled, so I went on the hunt for something more affordable! I landed on Walmart, which was about half the price (yay!) but also about double the shipping time. So the cards came in really late – and I had to wait to print our letters, because I wanted to know if I could include news of a new job for me. So I rushed to get them out the door on time this year and fear I may have missed some folks in the process. I MUST do better with the organization of this next year. Having said that, I did love the letter this year. I did it in a bingo card format, wince the theme of our year was along the lines of, “I did not have THAT on my Bingo card for 2024!”

TWO: Enjoy some fun Christmas activities. A few years ago (when Ryan’s mom was sick, I think) we went on a date to the Christkindlmarkt in Carmel (which is near Indianapolis, if you’re not from around here). We really loved it, so when we found out our county was starting one this year, we knew for sure we wanted to go. It was small and new, and not nearly as grand as the one we went to before, but we did enjoy walking around after the light-up parade, and I hope it comes back year after year! It’s fun to have something like that close to home. We also had the chance to see the pretty trees at Swiss Village Ryan had to work this event (now that he has a new role, he has to work more events) so we didn’t get to do it as a date, but I did walk around with Mom and Dad for a while and then finished up on my own. I love trees and themes, so it was a happy evening! (And again – the milk and cookie tree was my absolute favorite!)

THREE: Settle my heart for Advent. I thoroughly enjoyed making my way through Darlene Schacht’s advent study and preparing my heart for Christmas.

FOUR. Look ahead to 2025. Done-ish. I have started to plan for the new year, though I might sneak in a little more planning over the next day. I do have several things I want to be sure to complete, but if there’s anything I learned in 2024, it’s that one of the loudest verses in the Bible is “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it’s the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” He had a lot of prevailing purposes this year!

FIVE: Work on our anniversary album. This one failed. I am mostly caught up on our normal albums, but in all the Christmassing and starting a new job, I did not get started on the anniversary album.

Other adventures:

·         We visited three new-to-us states at the start of this month and were able to update our travel map.

·         We celebrated 12 years of marriage and had the BEST time with it.

·         We went to see our friends in The Sound of Music. Such a great show!

·         I enjoyed a night of Christmas fun with friends from Sunday School.

·         I started my new job.

·         We went on a fun dinner date to celebrate our job changes. It was one of my favorite evenings this month!

·         We went to a Bible quiz meet to support the kids at our church who are working hard to learn more about the Bible!

·         Ryan recorded a workout video at the gym – which was so fun to watch.

·         We helped with the Christmas Eve service at our church.

·         We celebrated Christmas with several sides of our families.

·         We went on another fun date that I’ll tell you about soon. It was a blast!

Sunday Sentiments: A Year's End

 

The final Sunday of 2024 is upon us.

            I remember the first one so vividly, and it simultaneously feels like a combination of about 100 years ago and just a few moments ago.

            I hope that in the mix of Sundays, I’ve learned. I hope I am stronger and deeper than I was 52 weeks ago. I hope I have utterly depended on the Lord and that He has seen the true desire of my soul to walk as closely to Him as I can.

            How has your year gone? What have you learned? How have you grown?

            Dear friends, this day is pivotal, because it marks the final Sunday of a year. But this day is also common, because it isn’t any more special than the last Sunday or the next one. Each is an opportunity to worship, learn, and grow, and that never changes, regardless of the year tacked onto the end of the date.

            I hope you’ll join me. I hope you’ll celebrate, today, the goodness of the past year. I hope you’ll commit with me to learning and growing even more in the year to come!

Saturday Suggestions: Inspirations for Your Weekend

 

Today is the last Saturday Suggestions list in 2024! Thank you so much for reading along with these each week. I enjoy hunting down some random finds, and while I know they won’t ALL be winners for each of you, I do enjoy hearing from you about the ones that hit home along the way. My goal is to find some little nuggets that inspire, entertain, help, or simply encourage. I plan to keep this going next year, so come back next Saturday for a fresh round! Here are my final offerings for 2024.

ONE. 

These people built a replica home of the Little House from the TV show, and they live in it full time. They did make it slightly bigger and added some modern amenities – like a bathroom – but it is pretty incredible. According to one of her posts, they built it largely based on pictures from the set house, and I’m impressed by the outcome! The only thing I didn’t see (which also didn’t exist in the show) was a living room.

TWO. 

If you want to choose a word of the year for 2025, the Dayspring website has its annual quiz page up and ready to guide you. I’ve chosen my word of the year via a different method this year, but for several years, I’ve used this quiz and have loved seeing how that word plays a role in my year! There isn’t anything magical about a word of the year, but it can be a fun way to weave some intentionality into your days, for sure.

THREE. 

I had put aside this recipe to share with you and am pretty sure I never did it. I found it on a Pinterest search a while back and made a batch to share with a coworker of Ryan’s who had surgery. (We took dinner to her family one night.) Ryan said if I wanted to make these every week, I could, and he wouldn’t be upset about it. Well, I haven’t done that, but I did think I should share them with you!

FOUR. 

If you wish to shake up your laundry routine at the start of the new year, here are some recipes for essential oil sprays you can make for your wool dryer balls. Ryan and I have used dryer balls in place of dryer sheets for many years now, but I haven’t been great about adding oil scents to them. We both miss that, so I’m perusing this list of blends to see which one might be the best fit for us! I already have some glass spray bottles I can use, so I’m excited to get going on this one! BONUS: I’ve talked about it before, but as a reminder, we purchase our essential oils from Selah Oils, which offers a great product and also gives a portion of their proceeds to missions!

FIVE. 

I know Christmas is over, but in truth, I’m never done listening to Christmas music. It’s no secret that David Phelps holds the #1 spot in my heart for O Holy Night – and he always will. But this version by another of my favorites, Steve Green, is also excellent in all the best anthem-y ways. I grew up listening to Steve and still love his voice and commitment to excellent music. Enjoy!

SIX. 

Now that Christmas is in the past, you might need some fresh ideas to make your table pretty – ideas that don’t include a lot of red and green! I love this simple blue and white inspired table setting that features a lot of candles and pinecones! So pretty.

BONUS: 

Thank you for also reading along with my documentation of outfits in 2024. It has been a (mostly) fun project to do, and I have learned and been challenged by what I set out to do. I will not be continuing to daily document the outfits in 2025, but as I shared a few days ago, I do plan to continue honing the wardrobe and work on things like accessorizing!

Saturday, December 21, 2024

Sunday, December 22, 2024

Monday, December 23, 2024

Tuesday, December 24, 2024

Wednesday, December 25, 2024

Thursday, December 26, 2024

Friday, December 27, 2024

Bekah's Bookshelf: My 2024 Reads...The Grand Finale

 

Well, the month of December proved to not be a huge reading month for me. Between traveling for our anniversary and prepping for Christmas – and starting a new job – reading time was at a premium. I completed two books this month, but one is a book I’ve been reading a page at a time the whole year, so it doesn’t fully count as a December book. I want to tell you about the two I read and then quickly mention a few things about this year’s reading in general!

***

Source

            The book I did read this month was an Advent devotional called Prepare Him Room by Darlene Schacht. It was a new release this year and (as promised) was very different in format from the studies she usually publishes. This was a two-page reading per day, followed by some reflection questions. Darlene followed the Advent themes of hope, peace, joy, and love in this 28-day reading.

            The readings didn’t dive deeply into the Scripture passages, but they were thought-provoking and meaningful. I appreciated having this to read throughout the last four weeks as I prepared my heart for Christmas Day!

            As with all her books, you can purchase this one on Amazon or subscribe to her page to have free download access if that is financially helpful to you!

***

            The book I read throughout the year and completed this month was Discovering Jesus in the Old Testament by Nancy Guthrie. I received it as a Christmas gift last year and gave it as a gift multiple times this year.

            Daily devotional books are tough for me because so many of them are fluffy and stay at the surface level. It’s hard to find meat and substance in a short daily reading, but Nancy Guthrie delivered just that in this year-long book that looks at passages (from Genesis to Malachi) that point to Jesus!

            I made SO many notes in my Bible throughout the year of things I learned from her wisdom and guidance. There were, of course, some things that I’d heard or read before, but there were many things that were new to me entirely or presented in a slightly different way.

            I think it’s easy for a lot of people to find the Old Testament irrelevant, and it’s not – at all! I loved learning from it all year long and would heartily recommend this book to you if you’re looking for a daily reading book for next year. (It’s also not geared to women, as some daily reading books are, so anyone can benefit!)

***

            Completing these books brought my 2024 reading total to 33 books. I wanted to pause (possibly more for my own record-keeping than anything) to look back over what I read in 2024 and some of the highlights for me!

            8 Fiction Books. Not surprisingly, I read more fiction than anything else. Many were fun, mindless reads that won’t rise to the top of memorable books of my life, but they were great mind-escapes from the parts of this year that were hard in real life. I had grand plans of reading all the books in The Chronicles of Narnia, but alas, I only read three. I still want to finish the series and really loved the ones I did read…I just got sidetracked. (I also learned diehard readers have strong opinions on the order in which you read. The series recommended order has changed over the years, and I’m reading in the original order.) Easily my favorite fiction read this year was The Lost Letters of Pergamum, which was historical/Biblical fiction. It’s not a category I usually read, but it was really helpful in understanding first century culture, and the storyline was well done. Thank you, Julie Crandall, for loaning that one to me and recommending it!

            1 Pop Culture Book. I’m not really a huge reader of pop culture books (mostly because I live under a rock and know very little about it) but back in January, I did read a book about the TV series Friends. It was a good book – but I didn’t love it as much as I hoped. I don’t think I have any other books from this category on my wish list, so you probably won’t even see this one on the recap list in 2025

            6 Spiritual Growth Books. I honestly thought this category might have more books in it for me this year, but if you combine some other faith-based book categories below with this one, the number holds more consistent with what I expected. Not all the spiritual growth books I read this year were stellar, but Keith Drury’s book Holiness for Ordinary People was one of my favorite reads this year. I found it when we were cleaning out Mom and Dad’s book collection and snagged it, since Keith had been one of my college professors. I’m so glad I can still learn from his wisdom. (Keith passed away unexpectedly this year, so to have his words in written form is a gift.)

            6 Memoirs. This category has become one of my favorite genres over the last couple of years, so I wasn’t surprised to see so many of them on the list. I loved some a whole lot and others were a struggle to finish. But in the mix, I discovered a new beloved author: Kendall Vanderslice. Her memoir By Bread Alone was one of my favorite books this year. She has two other books out, both of which are on my wish list. (I already gifted one of them to someone else…that’s how much I loved her writing, even though I hadn’t read that particular book.) One of my all-time favorite memoirs EVER (and also of this year) was Beth Moore’s All My Knotted-Up Life. I wouldn’t mind going back to listen to this one in audio format just to hear it for real in Beth’s voice, even though I heard every printed word in her voice as I read.

            3 Personal Growth Books. I was surprised that in this category, I had zero misses. I loved every single book I read. One was Crucial Conversations, which I read after hearing it recommended in an online course I took. It’s a book I need to read over and over again – but it taught me some good things about handling conflict in conversations. Another favorite? Letters to My Students, Volume 1 – written by a seminary professor. I read this one over the summer, while I was filling in at church, and it was a rich teacher for this student during that time! And finally, Excellence Wins by Horst Schulze, who is the co-founder of the Ritz Carlton and gave great advice for doing your career-craft well, whatever it might be. My friend Jodi recommended this one to me, and I loved it so much that now Ryan is reading it!

            1 Bible Commentary. I reread Spurgeon’s commentary on Matthew and loved it as much as the first time I read it a few years ago. I also read many pieces and parts of other commentaries as I studied both personally and for speaking purposes this year. I can probably officially be counted as a nerd, because I do dearly love a commentary.

            7 Bible Studies. Some of these were personal choices and I read others so I could teach them, but I learned a whole lot from all of them! One of my favorites is the one I mentioned at the start of this post: Discovering Jesus in the Old Testament. Rich in connections and info, I gifted it multiple times this year.

            1 Travel Book: I read Parks Across America, which whet my appetite for more travel. It’s going to have to wait, but I’ll be ready for it in a few years! Thanks, Brompton Family, for sending it to me! I also read parts of other travel books as I did some future planning!

            So there you have it! I have stacks of books awaiting my attention, so I’ll be back with more recommendations and stories in 2025!

Our Little Christmas

 

Yesterday was a full day from start to finish. We had three Christmases and another visit to squeeze in between the last two Christmas gatherings, and both Ryan and Lexi are sleeping soundly beside me on the couch while I write this to you at the end of Christmas Day.

            But today I want to tell you about our little Christmas at home. Our church had a Christmas Eve service (later in the evening) so I put together a breakfast casserole for Christmas morning before we left for church.

            By the time we got home and I finished all my evening chores, it was late, and I was pretty wiped out. I slept right through all the alarms and Ryan making coffee and baking the casserole. By the time he finally managed to wake me up, breakfast was ready, and I was out of time to sleep!

            Breakfast was quite yummy, and we ate it in the dining room by the light of the tree.

            Then we went downstairs and opened our stockings. We enjoyed our treasures – and enjoyed watching Lexi find her treasures too! Bones and bully sticks and even a new toy!

            We were able to spend a little bit of time together before we had to get going to our other Christmas adventures, and I think she liked it!

            And last night, after we arrived back home, we watched Elf. Or the first few minutes of it anyway. 😊