As The Year Ends

 

2024 is drawing to a close. Today I listened to my friend preach to her congregation about taking time to think back through the year ~ to reflect. 

This year for me has been quite challenging. I feel like I have aged a lot. My body feels sore and tired and my skin looks it. I have nursed a baby every day this year. I have not slept through the night one time or even for more than six hours straight. Sleeping six hours straight has only happened a few times. However my baby has grown beautifully and is thriving. As the year ends she is running, walking backwards, climbing, saying many small words, she is blowing kisses and understanding so many words.  This year I helped plan and make happen a wedding of over one hundred people for my daughter in a very short time. The strain of this was immense. This year I am homeschooling the most children and the most grades with no outside help or support with a nursing baby. This year I took a stand in my marriage that I had not in the past and have also been going through a lot with my oldest son. 

This year I travelled for the first time since 2006. It was a highlight of my year.

This year I became a Marmee when my oldest daughter had her son just ten days ago. This was a beautiful, redemptive, miraculous moment for me.

This year I have chosen to get up and get to work over and over again when so many mornings I wanted to stay in bed and just say enough ~ I give up! I just did the next right thing over and over again.

Another year comes and I have the privilege to do that again I hope. My baby will move closer and closer to being a toddler and will start forming her opinions and becoming her own person. My five year old will turn six and my ten year old eleven. My fourteen year old will be fifteen and my seventeen year old will graduate and turn eighteen. I will have a child that will turn twenty one and will have her own one year old baby. I hope I can capture all the moments you know? That I can see them for what they are and hold them close. 

Like right now my fourteen year old is making turkey broth under duress. She has ZERO desire to cook or bake anything unless it's her idea. However I have certain responsibilities I feel to teach her kitchen basics and she is taking Foods Ten. Her commentary right now is so hilarious. She has decided she will never make a turkey dinner when she is a mother or an adult. She is ordering pizza every time. She has decided to become a vegetarian. She is telling me that this turkey has been in the 'danger zone' for far too long and she is going to contract salmonella (she just did a food safe course). She is not often my most vocal child. She has even been attempting to quote some scripture about how this is not ethical. It has me in stitches. 

All the moments

All the joy

xo