by Hope
How will you finish out the year? Will you spend it celebrating all the wins of the year? Wallowing in the loss? Or are you already forward facing? Ready to leave 2024 in the past and step into what is to come?
For me, I am slowing down this year. Being very intentional about where I allow my mind to linger.
While I may never be able to stop my mind from racing, from making lists, from looking far into the future and attempting to make plans. I can choose different. And this year, I am choosing to slow down this month.
Christmas is different this year. I’ve made no plans, set no expectations, and plan to take the day as it comes.
Since I’ve returned from Texas, I am taking each day as it comes. Trying to sit on decisions and evaluating all options. Not rushing or being ruled by emotions. Nor fear.
The Last Few Years were…
2023 was spent wading through grief and loss. It felt like I was tossed from crisis to loss and then back again, over and over again.
2024 has been spent making strides to regain my equilibrium and rolling around ideas for my future. And the transition to empty nester was complete.
2025 is going to be the year that I make decisions about what this next phase of life will be. I must be wise. And I must not rush.
And that is my focus for this last month of the year. I am going to be still. Be quiet. Be alone. And spend time seeking God’s will, determining what is best and healthiest for me, and perhaps, finding a purpose that I can turn my eye too. I truly do need something outside of my own head to focus on. But I have absolutely no idea what that is to be.
My wish for you these last two weeks – peace, joy, and a gentle ending to the year.
Hope is a resourceful, solutions-driven online business manager with over two decades of experience helping clients streamline operations, manage projects, and grow their businesses through digital marketing and technology.
But life has a way of rewriting your plans.
A year ago, Hope made the decision to move in with her aging parents full time – a season she wouldn’t trade, even as it came with its own financial and emotional weight. Earlier this year, she lost her mother, and is now walking the tender, disorienting path of grief while learning what “forward” looks like from here.
Hope came to the Blogging Away Debt community in 2015 as a single mom raising five foster and adoptive children. She’s written through job changes, financial setbacks, and the bittersweet transition to an empty nest. Her kids are finding their footing in the world now – and so is she.
Rooted in faith and fueled by the same perseverance she’s brought to every hard season, Hope is ready to face her finances with fresh eyes and an honest pen. She believes that clarity, courage, and community can change the trajectory of anyone’s story including her own.
She lives in Austin, TX with her dad, loves adventures with her dog Addie, and is figuring out, one step at a time, what this next chapter is meant to be.
So, what do you think ?