The Crowning of the Year

We have come to the crowning of the year, my friends, and oh, what a year it has been. This passage has been on my heart for some months now:

“You crown the year with Your goodness,
And Your paths drip with abundance.
They drop on the pastures of the wilderness,
And the little hills rejoice on every side.
The pastures are clothed with flocks;
The valleys also are covered with grain;
They shout for joy, they also sing.” – Psalm 65:11-13

2024 was a year of both unexpected joy and unforeseen suffering.

In May I had the surprising delight of getting to attend a writer’s conference that changed my life in a wondrous way. I came alive again to my love for writing, to a new understanding of what it means to be called by the Lord to a work that is often lonely and hard and unrewarding, but can be used for the healing of hearts and the glory of our King. I left that conference refreshed, inspired, and brimming over with ideas and gladness.

Less than two months later, my little sister’s back was broken in a freak accident that nearly left her paralyzed. By the grace and goodness of God, she is alive and walking today, but it has left wounds on my heart that will not be easily healed. I didn’t know before that day that such horror and pain could happen under the bright summer sun. It was a nightmare come to life, and something I have tried to write about but have not yet been able to. I don’t know yet what it is to be a parent, but to be an older sibling who once rocked your baby sister to sleep at night, and then to see her suffering such pain, is a nearly unbearable thing.

But not wholly unbearable, for the grace of God is a wondrous and illuminating gift that lights the way through even our darkest nights. As we walked through that valley, we were surrounded by the love of friends who showed up, the unexpected kindness of people we had never met, and the confused awe of doctors who, not knowing the goodness of a God who gently holds in His hands all the tangled threads of our lives, couldn’t understand the miracle of our sister’s survival.

On Christmas morning, in a sanctuary glowing with gentle light, my eyes filled with tears as my little sister sang these words:

From mountain top to valley low
Through laughter and through tears
Surely the goodness of my God
Will follow all the years

His grace has indeed followed our family throughout this year, bringing us through the valley, haunting our steps and suffusing the shadow of pain that threatened to overtake us with the overwhelming brightness of His love. I have taken my pain to the foot of the cross nearly every day for the past six months, and the Lord has met me there each time without fail, lifting my burden and taking it upon His own shoulders with patient lovingkindness.

This year might have been full of the sharpness of sorrow, of tears and tragedy and health concerns and heart ache, and the relinquishing of cherished dreams of my own into the mighty hands of God, but it was also full of startling joy. Of laughter with family, those dear ones who know all one another’s faults and still love each other fiercely, circled around our fireside. Of nights of stargazing with childhood friends, of creativity and fulfilling work, of tea parties and handwritten letters and long phone calls with loved ones, of good books read and ministry that both emptied me and filled me to overflowing at the same time. Of moments that shattered my heart with their sheer breathtaking joy. I drove home alone through the streets of our little hometown one wintry, windswept night before Christmas, lights lining the shops as the strains of Josh Groban’s “O Holy Night” came over the radio, and my entire body was awash with chills. “This is it,” I thought. “This is what it means to sit in the presence of the Lord with empty hands and be known and loved.”

Walking through sorrow has taught me a beautiful thing: that the grace of God glimmers its way through even the most broken of our days. He shows up in the valley to walk beside us and guide us when we stumble, heedless of the storms that would sweep a more tremulous foot away. He has proven Himself good, over and over again.

“The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
 His mercies never come to an end;
 They are new every morning;
 Great is your faithfulness.”  – Lamentations 3:22-23

I have tasted and seen of His goodness in the past year, in the midst of both good and bad, and it has given me an unshakeable confidence in His sacrificial love for the world. The word the Lord has given me for 2025 is Courage – courage to face whatever comes, because nothing can tear us away from the loving, nail-scarred hands of our Savior. He gives the very best to those who put their trust in Him.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who trusts in Him.” – Psalm 34:8