2024
As I sit and reflect on 2024 on this first day of 2025, all I can think is, “it was a good year.” It was a great year. It wasn’t an easy year, but it was a great year. When I try to quantify the feeling my first thought jumps to the lack of loss. In 2021 we lost Uncle Peppi, my “favorite” uncle. In 2022 I had a miscarriage that rocked my world. I grieved that loss for most of the year. It profoundly changed me as a person. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever been through. Then in 2023 I had to watch my brother and sister-in-law go through the loss of a child. My miscarriage the previous year finally found purpose as I tried to support them through their loss only to find myself being supported by Andrea a few months later when I experienced another miscarriage. This one was less emotionally devastating but was physically difficult. We knew the pregnancy was anembryonic at the 10-week mark but it took several more weeks for my body to catch on. Once my miscarriage started, my body was unable to fully resolve it, and I ended up having to have surgery.
What I’ve learned over my 37 years is that life is not always what it seems on the surface. If you are willing to look for the silver linings, they are always there. The day I found out my pregnancy was not viable I had left a women’s retreat to go get an ultrasound. I decided to return to the retreat despite the diagnosis. The support of those women was invaluable in that experience. Something else I picked up at that retreat was a new mantra that I carried with me into 2024. It is, “everything always works out for me.”
On the surface this mantra sounds conceited. However, if you really dig into it and the practicality of it, it is not. It doesn’t mean that everything always goes my way or is always easy. It is more of an acceptance that everything always works out as it should. This allows you to be positive when things are hard. There was nothing positive about finding out my pregnancy, that I wanted so badly, that I thought was twins leading up to the fated ultrasound, was not viable. That was definitely not working out for me on the surface. However, when you adopt the mantra that everything always works out for me then you accept that why it may not be what you want or what you thought it was going to be, it is the course your life should be taking. I will never know why this pregnancy didn’t work out, but I do know that I have two healthy and amazing children that I love raising (most days). Possible scenarios for the miscarriage being true to my mantra is that I was 36 years old with high blood pressure. What if a pregnancy wouldn’t have been survivable for me? The reality is we can never know all the what ifs. But with my mantra I can feel confident that while it wasn’t the outcome I wanted, it did work out for me.
This idea of everything always works out for me is also supported in scripture. Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” Paul didn’t say everything works out the way you want it to. He said all things work together for good. Having that trust that God has this no matter how it may seem on the surface is a key to happiness.
Which brings me back to 2024, my greatest year yet. Not because it was easy but because I trusted that everything always works out for me. I didn’t look for 2024 to be the perfect year. I found happiness in the hard. I trusted that the hard things were things I had to move through for greater joy on the other side.