Lessons From the Year

One of the December prompts was “Lessons from the Year: What is the most important lesson 2024 has taught you?“, and what a perfect prompt to write about for the last day of the year. I’ve been overly reflective the last couple of weeks, as I usually am at the end of December, and this is a great time to share some of those thoughts.

For me, the year has been full of learning and growth, in a variety of areas. I’ve worked through more trauma, I’ve experienced more lessons in parenting young adult children (Lord, have mercy), and I’ve been blessed with new business friends that have given me invaluable lessons in not doing this whole business thing alone.

But overall, if I had to sum it all up, I’ve had two pretty big lessons this year that greatly impacted me in every way.. The first was the power of waiting and being still, and the second was the power of small, steady steps.

I have been in transition mode within my business for the last 18 months, as I’ve recovered from life-saving/life-changing open heart surgery, and I’ve tried to find a new “normal”. Business has struggled, and I’ve despaired quite a bit during the months, when I was not well enough to do what I wanted to do. I spent a lot of time in waiting mode, forced hibernation, and feeling unclear what was coming and what I should do next. I prayed a LOT, and had a lot of frustration in the waiting, because my natural inclination is to GO, DO, JUMP IN, PUSH THROUGH. But as I prayed for “what’s next”, I continued to hear “be still” for months. And months. AND MONTHS.

The waiting time was oh so very long. Like felt interminable. I still get a stomach ache when I think about how hard that time was. But, I learned something. When forced to do so, I CAN WAIT. And it didn’t kill me. In fact, I think it made me stronger. I healed sooner, and my faith and trust in God was forged in the fire of waiting and became deeper than ever. I’m hopeful that in the coming years, if I need to go through a season of waiting again, I will be a little more gracious, a little less angsty, and a little more thankful to be in the season God wants me in.

And oh my, when the waiting season ended – I began to learn the next lesson – the power of small, steady steps. I wasn’t ready to leap or run and I’ve learned I can no longer “push through” if I want to stay healthy… but I could take one step at a time, one day at a time, and create something I would never have expected to create. Because in the waiting, God revealed to me how I could turn a long-held dream into a reality.

In the last six months, I’ve made a larger pivot in my business than I could have ever imagined. I went back to my roots and started offering website design / blog design again. It began as a “what if I did this a little more” and over the course of a few months became “oh, this is what I’m doing full-time now”. And I couldn’t be happier or more excited about what the future holds.

Because this website/blog design thing is SO MUCH BIGGER than what I can do with WordPress and a domain name. I love, love, love being able to turn someone’s ideas into a beautiful website, but what I love even more? Helping women share their stories. Write their experiences. Describe their creative pursuits. Blog their thoughts and share their legacy. And in the process, I also get to share MY story, my experiences, the wisdom I’ve gained over 52 years of life. I’ve been able to define WHO I am and WHAT I am here for.

There were moments when the goals I set felt too big, the dreams too far away. But each time I took a deep breath, leaned into my faith, and did just one small thing—sent an email, wrote a paragraph, designed a single template—I realized that progress happens in those little steps. Those small, steady steps of listening and then moving forward in faith have been EVERYTHING.