I love a year-end review, you know, the kind where the big news stories are re-capped, and we’re reminded of everything that happened over the course of the last 365 sunrises and sunsets. 

I watched the one on ABC a couple of nights ago. I was reminded that our favorite high school English teacher and PE coach are getting married (aka Tayvis, Traylor, “Love Story,” Puke/Barf/Vomit—pick your title).

Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez got married in the wedding of the year in Venice, Italy, while Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, our favorite Aussie couple, are now living in Splitsville.

One Pope died, and another was elected—for the first time ever, an American from Chicago, who talks like he knows his way around deep-dish pizza and Wrigley Field as well as he knows the Vatican.

I relived the Texas flooding of the Fourth of July, and mourned again over campers and staff from Camp Mystic who perished, along with so many others who were swept away in the middle of the night.

Besides that, I remembered the wildfires in California at the beginning of the year. I also saw they’re having some pretty torrential rainfall right now, too. For half of an evening, I considered going to the Rose Bowl and watching Alabama take on Indiana, but I changed my mind—I don’t need to start the new year by inviting a natural disaster into my life, and Sweet Husband doesn’t yet have a STAR ID, now required on all domestic flights as of the past spring. 

Remember what it was like to wait in those lines, only to be told you didn’t have this and that form of paperwork? I got mine taken care of two years ago, but Youngest Daughter’s 16th birthday in March required a visit to the courthouse for that all-important driver’s license.

More like a trip to Disney World and waiting in line for the Avatar ride.

And oh, Alabama—from blowing it against Florida State in that first debacle of a game, to giving it away to Oklahoma in the next-to-last contest of the regular season. Bama’s Saturdays were marked with more ups and downs than the Scream Machine at Six Flags Over Georgia.

Georgia—we’re evened up there, at least, for the time being.

Maybe your year was the same, with a special emphasis on the lows, and you’d just as soon forget it and start afresh tomorrow. 

You can do that. You can do it January 1st, or you can be like me and start your “new year, new you” plan at random times during the year, which honestly, seemed to work pretty well in 2025.

This year will be the year I finally, really and truly, did the writing thing. For the first time in my life, I pushed past the three-headed beast of judgment, failure, and rejection and Just Did It. There is no other way to put it. I made myself sit down long enough to write 500 words, which became 1000, which has now turned into more than I ever imagined possible. 

I struggled with it for so long because I was afraid if I gave in to it, I’d become obsessive, dwelling on every word and phrase until I felt it was perfect, which would never happen, because I am the Queen of Self-Deprecation, Miss Put Myself Down and call it humility.

Yet all along the Still Small Voice said differently:

Do it. Stop putting it off. You’re running out of time.

As I write this morning, I see the reflection of my neck and jawline in the computer screen, doubly illuminated by the artificial light and by the sun’s glaring rays. I can see tiny wrinkles, a loosening of what was once taut and firm. This year it has accelerated, and there’s no amount of creams or lotions or potions that can undo the effects of time and sun damage. A pair of reading glasses sits atop my head, ready for a moment’s notice, as I cannot see small words on print without them. Wisps of silver protrude from my temples, yet I think, what a pretty color. Also—my hair is not wiry and wild, like older hair can sometimes be. It’s just as soft and fine as it was when I was three years old.

But the truth is that each day that rocks along is one less day that I have. That’s a great motivator. Death and the grave are coming, y’all.

This was the year of my big surgery. Some told me to be happy, and they sugar-coated a cancer-preventing surgery by claiming that I’d have perky new boobs at the end of it all.

No, y’all, I don’t think this is the same as a boob job, and the people who told me I’d have a nice new set of headlights have never been through the same kind of surgery I had.

It was either that or radiation to try to stay ahead of those little mutated cells that are hopefully gone now. But I don’t dwell on that. In fact, it’s been a while since I’ve really thought about it, but since this is a year-end review, I’d do myself a disservice to ignore going through it.

Instead, what has taken its place is the greatest thing that God reminds me of:

“I Am With You.”

It’s the one that squashes the old English teacher in me and tells me it’s okay to end a question or a sentence with a preposition.

It’s the one that tells me to keep putting the words down, but that it’s also about more than just meeting a daily word count.

It’s the one that empowers me to live without fear.

It’s the best encouragement, support, and reminder that I’m created for a purpose, and every day is a new chance to live it out.

So March 24th came, and I started. Not January 1st. The end of March was spring break, the week of the Avatar-sized line at the courthouse. I guess a lot of us got things done that week, but I didn’t have any particular goal in mind other than to write and to put it out there for whoever to see.

What started as the first post turned into 139 days straight of putting it out there. The first forty were for me and for the others in the world that have found my blog through the algorithms of WordPress. It used to freak me out to see likes from readers in India, France, Zimbabwe, Sweden, Dominica, Canada, the U.K., Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands.

Me, who won’t click the links in emails if I get the slightest whiff of phish.

Me, who does look forward to answering scam phone calls in the hopes that a real person is on the other end, because I turn them into prayer sessions for the caller.

Once, the gentleman on the other end gratefully accepted the prayer for a new line of work, thanking me at the end of it all.

A few weeks later, another solicitor gave me a “big F-you,” to use his word-for-word term, and he hung up on me.

Funny how prayer works. The volume of my spam calls decreases when I launch into a prayer service for the caller, after being asked if I want to add insurance to a car I don’t own or sit down at my computer and check my email.

That’s a-whole-nother post right there.

But I got comfortable with writing, and after the first forty days, I did the next scary thing:

Sharing it on the Book of Faces for my friends and family to see.

Stranger Danger is a lie. It’s the ones closest to you who can really make or break you. All I can say is that the ones who are closest to me—and that includes everyone on the Book of Faces, because if you’re my friend there then I’d for sure bring you a batch of muffins in real life if the occasion called—have been nothing but the absolute best. 

To the ones who see my posts and like them, comment on them, read them, and maybe appreciate them, thank you. 

Thank you for telling me when you see me that you enjoy them.

Thank you for acknowledging that I’m trying to do something of worth.

Because it’s so much easier to live inside a hole, to stay in our caves with our heads and our dreams buried in the clay, than to take the risk of making idiots out of ourselves.

Until it isn’t. Until you can’t stand yourself. Until the fear of unfulfillment grows larger than the fear of failure.

Until that Small Voice turns into the loudest you’ve ever heard.

If you’ve got something you’ve always wanted to do or try, if it’s within legal bounds and if it can help someone, you’ve got my blessing, even if that person is just yourself.

If it can make you into the person God intends for you to be, get off your rump.

Or maybe get on it. That’s what it takes to build things with words.

What is certain: my skin will continue to wrinkle, my hair will continue to silver, and my eyesight will continue to need extra support.

But the best part?

The words will continue to build.

And God will continue to be with me, through it all.