Weekly Update: 1.4.26

We all stayed up late on Wednesday to ring in the new year. We made too many snacks and had a movie marathon. At midnight, we popped open some champagne and sparkling juice, toasted to 2026, and sang auld lang syne.

As fun as the evening was, the changing of the year was difficult to wrap my mind around. Of course, I knew it was coming — but for some reason, I wasn’t ready. Perhaps the reason lies in my many incomplete goals for the year. There are several homestead projects I thought would be finished by now. There is the stack of books on my shelf I thought I’d have read. There are fun things I hoped to do this holiday season that simply haven’t happened.

It’s easy to feel a bit discouraged when the seeming chaos of life gets in the way of things we hoped to accomplish. And yet — we all know that’s how life often works. As the well-known Proverbs 16:9 says, “The human mind plans the way, but the Lord directs the steps” (NRSV). What feels like chaos is always ordered by God’s knowledge. As someone who always expects a bit more out of herself than she can actually deliver, I know well the need to let go of my own goals and accept what God directs for each day.

I was reflecting on this truth this morning during my Bible reading. With the turning of the year, I’m starting a Bible-in-a-year reading plan. With many Christians, I am starting in Genesis, beginning the year by situating my own story in the cosmic one that began with Adam and Eve. I’ve read this narrative so many times over the years, but I was struck particularly with Eve’s thought process this morning. It’s easy to get caught up in the mythic dynamics of the first temptation — the talking serpent, the enchanted fruit, the tree of life. The fantastic aspects of this true tale can easily blind us from the very normal mental processes involved in the first sin. Eve’s first step is to believe the lie — “something better exists than what God has given me.”

There is a lot to be said philosophically about the problem of evil, about the question of whether this is indeed the best possible world, about the tension between providence and free will. And in general, we humans always have more to learn about boundaries, time-management, and constructive goal setting. All of that aside, though, there is the concrete reality of our lives — like our primordial parents, we are all given a specific set of circumstances in which to follow God. We are given gifts and curses, strengths and weaknesses, friends and foes. There is fruit we can eat of, and fruit out of our reach. While we ought always to learn from our mistakes and poor choices, there is a truth we have to accept — God knows our weaknesses and allows our foibles. These, too, become a part of the life God has handed to us. Every moment of every day we face Eve’s dilemma — we can choose gratitude or greed.

In many ways, 2025 was a difficult year for our family. There were broken hearts, lost loved ones, surgeries, health scares, health losses, harsh words, and damaged relationships. There was a lot of sickness — I was sick myself several times and dealt with more severe migraines than in years past. There were homestead setbacks — to the point at times it felt like God was just not blessing our efforts.

Yet, despite these hardships, there were very real blessings. While we didn’t get as much done on the bunkhouse as we wanted, we did make progress. It can feel painfully slow, but where we spent our last holiday season living in a wall tent, we spent this one living in our bunkhouse.

We have finished walls and doors in all our rooms, and many have flooring and trim. We have electric lights and indoor plumbing. We have almost finished installing exterior cedar siding, which we made ourselves from fence pickets.

This summer, we cleaned out our storage unit, downsized, and now have all of our belongings on our homestead. Once everything was in the bunkhouse, we took down our beloved wall tent.

We had the best garden we’ve ever had in 2025, and we built garden infrastructure that will last us for years to come.

We maintained a couple apple trees, and we planted concord grapes. We captured three swarms of honeybees.

Bonnie-Jean and Jeremiah raised a litter of German Shepherd puppies, and Grace added a new Mini-Aussie to her own little pack.

Less tangibly but perhaps most importantly, our parents put our land into Ozark Highland Homestead, LLC — a member-managed entity owned by my siblings and me. We have been wanting to do something to protect and manage our property for years, and we are so thankful we found the right option for our situation.

Perhaps our greatest blessing this year was finding a home church. While we have very much enjoyed spending time at several local churches since moving to our homestead, we have struggled to have peace that we were where God wanted us. This unrest is something many of us have wrestled with and prayed about for years. At long last, we feel like God has finally led us to our home church in 2025 — not to another denomination, but to the Catholic Church. Words cannot express what a gift this journey has been to our family already, and we look forward to our confirmations at Easter Vigil in 2026.

So ready or not, I’m embracing the end of 2025 with gratitude. I choose to thank God for these exact circumstances, for the fruit of the trees He has planted in my life. I choose to look forward to 2026 with trust that He is directing my steps, even as I ask Him to show me ways I could follow Him more closely this year. I’m looking forward to celebrating these last days of Christmas. And then, I’m excited to spend some time in January getting organized and setting (realistic) goals for this new year.