A Heart That Beats for Home

76. Gratitude, Growth, And Grace - Reflections on 2025

• Season 2

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When the calendar starts sprinting and the afternoons turn dark way too early, we get the chance to slow everything down. We can take a deep breath, look back on the year, and see it through three lenses that matter—gratitude, growth, and grace. Not to hustle harder or create picture-perfect plans, but to walk into 2026 with steadiness, a little more peace, and a whole lot more awareness of God’s goodness.

We talk about gratitude in the real, everyday ways—celebrating a daughter stepping into her calling, quiet nights by the tree and fireplace, and those little moments at home that shift the whole atmosphere. Then we dig into growth without the pressure—the boundaries we learned to set, the ways parenting older kids stretches us, the wisdom in saying no so our yes actually means something, and the practical helps (like a meal service) that make survival season feel a bit lighter. And woven through all of it is grace… grace for the losses, the weariness, the prayers whispered in the dark, and the strength God provided exactly when we needed it most.

You’ll also get reflection questions for adults and kids—easy prompts for a date night, a drive with your teen, or a few minutes around the dinner table. We’ll talk about why rhythms always outlast resolutions, how 10–15 minutes a day can reshape your spiritual life, and how choosing one simple word for the year can anchor your heart. And if you’re walking into this season feeling behind or tired, hear this: you don’t need to reinvent yourself. You need the daily mercies He’s already offering and the courage to take small, faithful steps forward.

If this episode encourages you, I’d love for you to tap follow, share it with a friend who needs a gentle landing place, and leave a quick review so more families can find their way here.


Episode 6 - Am I Good Medicine for My Family - Do I Pass The Joy Test?

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/6-am-i-good-medicine-for-my-family-do-i-pass-the-joy-test/id1719372285?i=1000645426505

Episode 9 - Reclaim Your Calendar: Does Our Family Calendar Reflect Our Values?

 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/9-streamline-your-life-series-week-1-reclaim-your-calendar/id1719372285?i=1000648329013

Books By Justin Whitmel Earley:

Habits of The Household - 

https://amzn.to/4nOrlTT

The Body Teaches The Soul- 

https://amzn.to/3WSQlOI

5 Year Prayer Journal:

https://www.dayspring.com/hosanna-revival-one-thing-i-ask-5-year-prayer-journal-edinburgh-theme?ne_ppc_id=21066640061&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21059800542&gbraid=0AAAAAD3t-bW-euiPYlgCwBm3Ry1bFz9ro&gclid=CjwKCAiA_dDIBhB6EiwAvzc1cC4tviyipz95tl-tJRV2QC9hcpWHNPJ1klpv_Yfj7xL91YWIEsj85RoCIDcQAvD_BwE

Reflection Questions for 2025:

Adults -  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_luDmtk8hdLhpFFd4as7vsNqtpFYQmHf/view?usp=drive_link

Kids- 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GcFg-pFWh06xSOwybvMj3MaFIA-N_vbj/view?usp=drive_link

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Follow Along @ - https://www.instagram.com/nikkicronksmith/

Welcome And Season Two Wind-Down

SPEAKER_00

Hey friends, I'm Nikki Smith, your host here at A Heart That Beats for Home, the podcast where we're ditching filters and diving headfirst into the raw beauty of all things home. Now, I am no expert when it comes to this whole parenting and marriage dance. I'm simply a gal who's been riding the mom roller coaster for 22 years and a wife still untangling the mystery of it all 25 years after saying I do. My goal is to bring you unapologetically messy and boldly genuine conversations about cultivating strong families. We're gonna laugh, possibly cry, and straight talk about the joy and chaos that comes within the four walls that we call home. No judgment and certainly no perfection. Just real talk from my heart, a heart that beats for home. Let's dive in. Hello, friends. Welcome back to yet another week here where we get to sit together for a short time and just reflect and ponder. I am so grateful for the last handful of episodes, just some really amazing interviews that I am so grateful the Lord has allowed us to have some incredible guests that I just feel humbled, we're willing to come on the podcast. And just week after week, so much wisdom and knowledge being poured out on us by just some really amazing humans. And as we're coming into the final two episodes of the year for the podcast and of season two, which is so hard to believe, excited just to slow down, talk a little bit about reflecting on the past year, looking forward to the next year, and just a recap for 2025 and all that has happened over the last 11 months as we have been here together in season two. And today just want to really take some time specifically to reflect back on 2025. It feels like the years go faster and faster the older I get. The famous saying that the days are long, but the years are short. And I know I've said it over and over on the podcast throughout the last 75 episodes. You've heard me say it several times, but I feel like the older our kids get, the days are no longer long. The days are short and the years are short. It's crazy how time works and time just really passes by. And so just taking some time to talk about gratitude, grace, and growth as we reflect on 2025 and as we look forward to 2026. And I know that this time of year can bring a big mix of emotions. There's a lot of people that just live for these holidays and coming into Thanksgiving and Christmas, just such a fun time of year. There's also a lot of pressure to finish strong. Maybe we're looking back at things that we thought 10 months ago, I thought I would be a lot farther along than I am here now in the beginning of November. Maybe some discouragement about balls that have been dropped or goals that weren't achieved. Maybe you've gone backwards in some areas that you had really hoped to go forward. So there's the kind of processing of all of that. There's the pressure to show up in this season where maybe we're coming into it a little bit tired and with not a whole lot to give and feeling pressure of showing up as the Pinterest mom with the perfect foods and the hosting and the cookie bakes and the perfect decorations and all the things that the kids need for the class parties. Just the list can go on and on. And so I know that this is a time of year where people can be at a really different place. A lot of us can be at different places on where we're at with energy, where we're at with emotions, where we're at with joy. And I think regardless of where you're coming into these final months of 2025, it is just a beautiful time to pause and reflect. Now, here in the beginning of November, before we are into the craziness of the actual holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas, I was telling somebody last night that I had put my Christmas tree up last week. And I used to be a hardcore Thanksgiving deserves its time on the calendar. It deserves its time to celebrate. And I was a hardcore, no Christmas decorations until the day after Thanksgiving. And the older I've gotten, the more I've realized, you know what, my capacity decreases as we get closer to the holidays. It seems like there's a lot of little things that sneak in, a lot of parties, a lot of little extra things on the to-do list with the holiday shopping and the wrapping and the creating the memories that things like putting up the tree, any of those things that I can start getting off of my list earlier in the season of November, the better it is for me, for my mental load, and just to be able to have my family really enjoy that. It was actually perfect timing. It snowed. It snowed like three days in this last week. We went from like really nice warm temperatures to really cold, windy snow. And so grateful that we had that Christmas tree up this last week and have been able just to sit in the living room. I will tell you what else. This is a difficult season right now, this last couple of weeks, as the time change. Holy moly, getting dark at 4:30 does something to your psyche. And so just having that Christmas tree and the fireplace has been so great. But I think right now, in the beginning of November, before we're buried in all of the to-dos and the tasks, it's a really powerful time to be able to just sit and reflect. I know a lot of people will do this the week in between Christmas and New Year's, that week where nobody knows what's going on. We're still not in the best habits, probably still eating a lot of those holiday treats and feeling yuck. And that's a week that a lot of people will sit and do some reflecting. I have found that it's powerful in the beginning of November to start already reflecting on the last year and looking forward to the next year. And I think there's a couple of things that come from that. Number one, we still have seven weeks left before the year is over. And seven weeks is a lot of time. It's a lot of time to say, okay, maybe I'm not where I thought I was gonna be, but there still is time to put some things into practice. We don't have to throw in the towel. There's a lot of people that at this point are gonna say, I'm not even gonna keep trying to work on those goals because it is what it is. In seven weeks, it's the new year. I can start over. And sure, give yourself grace where you need to give yourself grace. But I also think that this is a powerful season to be able to still make some decisions to show up for yourself. Maybe you're a little off from where you wanted to be on a goal, that if you really just committed to it, that you could really show yourself, hey, I can do this. Maybe if you're reading through the Bible or you had something, you know, that you wanted to finish in a year's time and you're just a little bit behind the ball. But if you gave it an extra hour or two, a week, maybe you'd be able to catch up and it would make you just feel really good about sticking to what you said you were gonna do. And then there also is just the wisdom in knowing, okay, this is not the season. Maybe, you know, this is something I need to re-revisit in January. But I just think it's a really great time of year to sit and reflect. And there's a couple of reasons why reflecting is really good for the soul. Number one, reflection anchors us. And without it, we often drift into the next year and we don't really get to sit and receive the lessons that God maybe has been teaching us this last year. Reflection also is a way of letting us live in a space of gratitude. And gratitude often rewires the emotional atmosphere of our home. A great episode to go back and listen to. I will reference it in the show notes. It's called Do I Pass the Joy Test? It's one of the most listened to episodes of the two seasons on the podcast. And specifically, just really good reflection, as specifically towards moms, but anybody it would apply to is do I pass the joy test in my home? Because we often are the ones that create that emotional atmosphere. And gratitude, when we go back and we reflect and we can find the things that we're grateful for, it does really put us into a different posture. And it's so crazy how quickly we can forget all of the amazing things that have happened. I feel like bad things that happen tend to sit with us. We can recall them easier. Our brain wants to go, this was a really hard year. But when we really stop and we look for the things where there has been so much good that has happened, it's such a good practice just for the spirit and for the emotional atmosphere of your home when you're coming at things in a stance of gratitude and gratefulness and thanksgiving. And I know that's something that we all like to do at this time of year, right? There's a whole holiday around it. But just as the mom in the home, just being able to set that tone. And for me, one thing that I just did, I felt, man, this might be a waste of time, but I really feel like it was beneficial. I don't know for the listeners, maybe not all of you are on social media. So maybe for you it's not going through your social media. Maybe it's going through your camera role or some of your text messages. But for me, I sat down yesterday as I was preparing a little bit for this episode and I went back into my Instagram stories in the archives. And I went all the way back to January 1st of 2025. And I just watched through the stories. And I didn't sit with all of them. A lot of them I clicked through, but so many of them, I go, oh my gosh, I forgot about that, or I didn't remember that we had done that, or oh, that was such a great day, or oh, it's so fun to have those people at the lake with us, or to be able to have dinner with that group of friends. And so maybe you need to take some time, just make a cup of coffee, make a cup of tea, sit down, and just go through your camera roll, through maybe your Facebook post, different places where you document the things that are happening in your life and just do a reflection. I sat with a notebook next to me and wrote down a lot of those things. I'll go over a handful of them here in a minute, but just a powerful way to kind of reset your emotional, your emotional stance for your family to just be in that place of gratitude. The other thing that reflection helps when we look back on the past year is it allows us to be intentional about strengthening our marriages. It brings clarity to parenting, whether that be in things that God really grew me there, or man, I remember that day and we really struggled. I know that it was at this point where I lost my cool, that things spiraled out of control. But when we reflect back on both the beautiful things of the year and the more difficult things, it really does help us to remember things that either went well or went poorly where we can adjust or we can repeat to be able to just strengthen those different relationships, specifically here in our homes, in our marriages, and in our parenting. And so when we look back, there are three different lenses that I would love for each of you as you're reflecting on 2025 to look at your year through. Three different set of lenses. I did this, have spent some time in this, will continue to spend some time on this. And I think it's just a really, it's a really beautiful way to reflect because it's not just pass or fail. And I, by default, can tend to be a pass or fail girl. I either completed the goal and I'm proud of myself, or I failed. It's winners and losers. And this list with these three different lenses that you can look back on your year with, I think just really position everything that you're going to be reflecting on in a different way. And the three lenses are gratitude, growth, and grace. So let's talk first about lens number one of gratitude. And a couple questions here that you could ask yourself. The first one is what gifts showed up in my life, big or small? And again, in this fast-paced world, it is so easy for us to forget about the little things that have happened. It's the big things we tend to remember, but the little beautiful things where we can be grateful. When I looked back on those memories in Instagram and in my camera role, a trip to Hawaii with my husband back in March, just a beautiful time for us to get away, that, you know, without the kids, just to slow down. Although it was a work trip for him, it was really special for me to be able to sit back as his wife and to watch him in his element being in corporate America. I don't get to see him interact as much in his professional life. He gets the opportunity to do that with me all of the time because so much of what I do, I can bring my family to. They've been able to be along a lot of the time with the front row seat to be at a lot of my events and the bigger things in my career. But for me, I really haven't been able to do that as much with my husband. And so just to sit back and just be so proud of him, watch him interact with his team, see the way that his team respects him, the comments that were made to me from so many different people that either work for him or who he works for, just a reminder for me of what an amazing man he is, the integrity that he shows up with, the way that he gives his all, that he cares about people. It was just a really special trip for us. Our sweet daughter Olivia is finishing up her first year of nursing school, something that we knew going into it was going to be an extremely difficult program, that it was gonna require so much of her. She's also working in the hospital to receive her tuition for free, which is such a gift. But again, we knew that working that 12-hour shift every week on top of being a full-time nursing student was gonna be difficult. And just to be able to have, again, a front row seat to watch her just soar, to be able to go to her white coat ceremony where she got pinned and was able to get that white coat put on her by the president of the nursing school, to see her show up in her role at the hospital and just care for patients so well, the way that she has excelled through her classes, the way she's persevered through super late nights and unbelievable deadlines and just dry eraseboard after dry eraseboard of different pharmacology terms and nursing terms, and to watch her just own that and to also find that she really feels like God has called her to. So cute. The other day I got a text and she was 100% sure when she started out that she wanted to do pediatrics and then went and did her labor and delivery rotation. It was like, no, I'm totally gonna do labor and delivery, then went back to a pediatrics rotation, which she's currently in, and she's like, No, I think I need to do pediatrics. And just to watch her be so excited about all the different places in the hospital that she just absolutely loves to be, to see her care so well for people and just to be so excited about it has been amazing. Our oldest daughter graduated from college in May. And just to go through that process of just being so proud of her for the way that she persevered through four years as not only a student, an amazing student who takes her studies very seriously, but also as a student athlete who had unbelievable demands and schedule put upon her to be an RA for two years and just to excel in that position and just build unbelievable relationships with not only her residents, but her co-RAs and her RDs, and just to see her blossom and come out of her shell, to see her say goodbye to an era of 12, 13 years of a sport being a huge part of her life and watching her just walk out of that stage gracefully and with a lot of emotion, but then figuring out, you know, this new part of her career and working in an orthopedic clinic where she is just giddy about what she's learning and sending in those PA applications to go on to graduate school just to see her excited about saving money and all the big girl things that come along with a full-time job and building new relationships as she lives here for the next year before going off to grad school has been so cool. Our 15-year-old started driving. So the baby is driving. Uh, the amazing weeks that we had at the lake this summer, although it looked very different than some of the previous years, just to go back and see all the memories of the morning coffee by the fire with my husband, or the boat rides with Landon as he was fishing, or just the sunsets as a family as we cruised and listened to praise and worship music. And although our girls weren't there, but for one week, there still were so many beautiful memories with the different people that got to come and stay, so many family and friends that were able to visit. We had a wedding of one of the most precious humans in our life that we got to celebrate over the summer. Unbelievable podcast milestones with some of my dream guests being on the show this year. And it makes me excited for what's to come still in the next year. Having all of our family at home. Again, this what we've called the encore year of having our oldest daughter home for a year that we never would have envisioned that we would get. And just to watch my adult children and sweet Landon, who sometimes gets lumped in as an adult. He probably doesn't have enough parenting happening, but that's okay. Just to see them laugh and have fun together and to put us to bed while they stay up and continue to have fun is just, it has been a really sweet time. One of my very favorite moments, the five of us together this year was we were able to work a Morgan Wallen concert with a good friend who was part of the staff on his tour. And all five of us were there and just an amazing evening of being together. I looked at my husband at one point and I'm like, I'm really excited about this next stage of life where our kids are all older. We can go places together, they can go off on their own. Jed and I just felt like there were so many times where we were standing back watching them. We were super fortunate to be right down in the pit. They were right up against the stage. And just to watch them having so much fun as siblings and laughing together and just creating so many memories. My favorite picture of the year is from that evening and just a sweet time with so many friends that were there as well. Um, and then just the things like the Bible in a year. I got to see so many stories throughout the year in my Instagram archives of just consistently showing up every day to work towards that Bible in a year goal that I didn't always do perfect, but we are gonna finish it on time. We're on target now. There have definitely been times throughout the last 10, 11 months where I've had to do a week of catch up or a couple days of catch up here and there, but that's okay because over the year, spending that 10 to 15 minutes a day consistently has added up to be a lot. And I did some quick math and essentially spending 15 minutes a day in the Bible reading, if I average it out, some days it probably was a little bit more than that. But on the conservative side, if I spent 15 minutes a day, it would have been 5,475 minutes or 91 hours. So two weeks worth of work for the average person I spent reading the Bible. And when you look at that as one big chomp, it seems very like overwhelming. But just to think, man, when we do something in small little consistent effort sessions, just this 10 to 15 minutes, 15 to 20 minutes, even when there might have to be a day or two when we have to make that up to get caught up. What an incredible power there is in just small progression day after day in keeping consistent. And so just so much to be grateful for. There's also a lot of pain that happened in that last year. There's been a lot of things that were extremely difficult. I have cried a lot of tears. We have had greater loss than we have experienced in a long time this last year, but it's so great to be able to go and just see so many things where God has just been so good to our family, so faithful. Another really great reflection. I don't know that we've talked about it on the podcast before, but there's something called the Five Year Prayer Journal. Again, I'll make sure to link it in the show notes. But it's a beautiful journal. You can only get it through the publisher that is it's printed by. It's not available on Amazon. Last time I checked. And it's not inexpensive. It's about a$50 purchase, but it is the most beautiful leather-bound journal. It's thick, it's a big, beautiful book. And each page, when you open it up, has five spaces for the day. So let's just say it was January 1st on the double spread page of January 1st. There would be five different paragraphs where you write in the year. Obviously, it's going to be January 1st each time, but you write in the year. So 2025, 2026, whatever it is. And I've had that now for almost two years. And so what's really cool about it is when you write that two, three sentences on that day, you're seeing on that exact day, a year before, two years ago, three years ago, what you were writing. And even just to do that this year. And again, not every day has it been done, but on the days where you can be entering today's prayer and just a little journal thought and be able to see the years before and to see so many of the things that I had written where kids were having a hard time or big decisions were overwhelming or illnesses or Jed's heart attack or just these, all these different things. And to be able to see, man, three years ago today, I was in a really difficult, dark space. But look what God has done. Or maybe last year I was in a really good place. And this year I'm really struggling. It's just a really beautiful way to see on paper the way that God is faithful and answers prayers, protects us, maybe redirects us from things that we thought were things that we really wanted that ultimately He knew weren't best for us. So again, I'm gonna link that in the show notes because that's a really great way to just to track. Okay, lens number one, gratitude. Lens number two to look at the last year through is a lens of growth and not in a lens of did I achieve enough, but more so how did God shape me? And again, I can be so wired for either I did it or I didn't, and there's no in-between. And I remember somebody telling me once a story of an investment account. And they said, if your goal was to have a million dollars in your 401k or your investment account by the time you were 50 and every paycheck, you were diligent at putting money away and the stock market sometimes did good, it sometimes did bad, but you just stayed unbelievably consistent in doing what you said you were gonna do. And on the day of your 50th birthday, when you wanted to have a million dollars, if your account only had$998,000 in it, would you feel like it wasn't worth all the work you had put in because you weren't at a million? Or would you be able to recognize$998,000? That's amazing. Even if it was$750,000 or$500,000, to have not met the goal, but to have been consistent, how much farther you came than you would have had you not been working diligently towards something. And I think it's really important that we stop and we say, where did I grow? How did God shape me? As opposed to did I win or did I lose? And things that we can celebrate as we look back on growth is our inner growth. A lot of times there's things that are silently happening inside of us. Again, I know for me, I'm gonna share a couple, but what's happening with the inner growth? How did I grow in boundaries? Was I able to better demonstrate boundaries and saying no? What about my parenting shifts? Where did I have to, because of the age of my kids or the different seasons that were in parenting? Where did I have to make parenting shifts? And how did I grow in that? And then again, similar to inner growth is quiet faithfulness. What areas in my life did I just quietly continue to faithfully show up and do the thing that I felt God was calling me to do? When I look at that list, I look at some things where I had growth. One was keeping my mouth shut. As I come into a stage of parenting older children and they live in my home, there's a lot of things where I feel like I want to interject my unbelievable wisdom and uh knowledge onto them, but knowing that is not what they need right now. If they don't ask for it, I'm gonna sit, I'm gonna smile, I'm gonna nod my head, and I'm gonna trust that God is going to help shape and grow them. I think a huge thing in my parenting shift this year has just been keeping my mouth shut and just being a cheerleader and an encourager instead of um a constantly nagging parent. I also have been really good at saying no more to others so that I can say yes to my family. And it is hard for me to say no. It is hard for me not to be a yes girl, to not to immediately want to step in and fill a need. And the Lord has been reminding me that when the need comes through, it's okay to pause and come back to it tomorrow to see if anybody else has felt called to step up because I already do serve in a lot of areas. And a lot of times we just say, I can squeeze one more thing in. And so being in a place where I can say no to others so that I can say more yes to my family. Being in a place of learning to just be a servant in my own home. And that sounds like so oppressive, but I don't mean it like that. To be in a place where I can say, this is a stage of life where I have really been given an opportunity to serve people in my home who are running at a far different pace than I am. I have a very full schedule, but I have a lot of freedom and flexibility in my schedule. And right now there are people that are working crazy hours, that are doing a lot of things outside of their jobs and their school and are running literally from 5:30 a.m. until 8, 9 p.m. And there are ways that I can just faithfully show up here in my home. And if I'm being totally transparent, sometimes it feels super lonely. And sometimes it feels like it does anybody see me? Am I just a doormat? And just praying through Lord, let me have a posture of service to serve my family so that they can go out and do the things that they have been called to do. And my family is great. It also coming around me and encouraging me. But right now I have just been in a place of kind of being, it's in that quiet faithfulness of the loading the dishwasher and the folding the laundry and the cooking the healthy meals, just in that period of my life that I get to show up that way. I also have had great growth this year in allowing myself to rest and take care of myself. I think there are stages of parenting where it feels like you literally cannot rest and you cannot take care of yourself. Like it just feels physically impossible. And I think there's always space to try to figure that out, but I also am not naive to the fact that seasons look different. And I'm in a season right now where if I decide that I am worn out, I can sleep in a little bit or I can take a nap or I can go get a massage or do the things I want to do and not feel guilty about it or feel like I am not being productive. And so I'm grateful for that. I've also allowed for some help in areas that I like to be a control freak on. I've been posting more and more about some of the meal services that we're doing. And everything in me says this is foolish and this is a waste of money, and I could make this so much cheaper. But repeatedly there are nights where we're coming home from an event or a basketball game or traveling, and I'm like, I have no idea what I'm feeding my family. And so we end up being at Chick-fil-A or we end up stopping in to get sushi and recognizing that's a lot more expensive than just having a meal service that shows up to my door where my kids, when I am falling a little behind, my kids and my husband have good healthy options to grab. And so being okay with allowing help in some areas. And so it's just, it's a really good, a good thing to go back and look at your year in a lens of growth. And then the third one is a lens of grace, looking back on 2025 with a lens of where did God carry me? Where did he comfort me? Where did he surprise me? And where did strength show up when I needed it? Where did I see Christ just step into the circumstance? I know that he's here all day, every day, but there are definitely times where you think, man, the reason we got through that, or the way that we were able to persevere and come out on the other side of that was because of grace and God stepping right in and carrying us, comforting us, and really just getting us through it. There are so many ways that you can look at that through the year. Like I mentioned earlier, we had an unbelievably difficult summer with the death of a dear friend that rattled our family and some of those closest to us and continues to just be an extremely difficult season to walk through and to process. There are so many different situations that maybe aren't as big as something like a major loss of a loved one, but things in simple prayers that have been answered, whether it comes to kids schooling or working through a test that they're struggling with and they need a certain grade and just down to the wire of just trusting that God is going to carry us through these different things. Maybe it's working on insecurities within your own self-worth and things that you have really been struggling on. And how did God show up in grace and help you learn through that and process through that and hopefully come out in 2025 stronger than you came into it? I love that layout of the three different lenses to look back on with gratitude, growth, and grace as you process through the last year. I think it makes us go into the next year stronger. And there's a handful of things that I have done year after year that we'll talk about in a second. But as you reflect, I think that sometimes it's really good to have some guided questions to help walk you through that. In the same way that your camera roll and other things can help you with memories. I think that there's some really good reflection that we can go through. And I have these two different lists of questions, and I'm gonna read through them. There's quite a few, but I think it's good, even if you're just driving or you're maybe doing the dishes and you're listening. In your headphones, just some things to think about. I will include these as a PDF in the show notes so that you can print these out. You can look at them. Maybe you take them on a date night with your spouse. So you sit with each of your kids over the next six, seven weeks in this year. Maybe you take each kid out for a quick coffee date or a lunch date and you go over these either together as parents with your child or one-on-one. Maybe you do it around a dinner table where you ask a couple questions each night, but just a really good year-end reflection list. And so I'm going to start with the one for adults that I came up with in a handful of different areas of life. First of all, in parenting, how did I intentionally invest in my children this year? What moments reminded me of the joy of being their parent? In what ways did I grow in patience, grace, and understanding with my kids? When did I model faith for them in both the big and the small ways? What am I proud of in our family this year? What is one parenting win I don't want to overlook? What do my kids need most from me in this next season when it comes to my time, attention, encouragement, and consistency? And how do I better listen to their hearts in the year ahead? In marriage and relationship. How did we grow as a couple this year? What strengthened our connection and what drained it? When did I feel most seen by my spouse? And when did I see them best? What simple things brought us joy together? Are there any habits or topics we need to visit with fresh grace? How did we handle conflict this year? What's one thing I can do to love my spouse better next year? And what rhythms help us protect time for each other? When it comes to faith and spiritual life, where did I see God's faithfulness this year? How has my relationship with Him deepened or changed? What prayers were answered, even in unexpected ways? Where did I struggle to trust God? What scripture, truth, or worship song carried me through the hard days? How did I use my gifts to serve others? What spiritual disciplines brought me peace? What is God inviting me to surrender or embrace in the new year? When it comes to time management and priorities, what consumed the most of my time this year and was it worth it? Where do I feel the most hurried or stretched thin? What boundaries help me protect my peace? Where do I need to simplify or say no in 2026? What areas of my life consistently felt neglected? Did I spend my best energy on what mattered most? What is one area I want to manage with more intentionality next year? And where do I need to create more margin when it comes to health and nutrition? How did I take care of my body this year? What habits made me feel strong or healthy? What did I learn about my body or my hormones that surprised me? Okay, that one's in there for me, guys, or for all my menopause mamas. How did my food choices affect my energy, my mood, and my focus? Where do I let stress drive unhealthy patterns? What new rhythms can I build for nourishment, not punishment? How can I honor God through how I care for my body? And what small changes could make a big difference next year? When it comes to rhythms and routines, and you guys, I'm going to give a shout out here because I wanted to mention it earlier and I didn't. Two books that I would strongly encourage. If any of these next questions really resonate with you, or if your time management and priority questions maybe were like, ooh, those are tough ones. The two books we just had Justin Whitmill early on the show a couple weeks ago, and his any of his books, but the two specifically that I will recommend. Number one is Habits of the Household, specifically in this rhythms and routines and the time management and priorities. Just a powerful book to read through, a great one for a couple to read through, a mom and dad to read through together. And then the one that we talked specifically about on the podcast with him, his brand new book, The Body Teaches the Soul, just so good about creating rhythms and routines in our life. And so the questions here on rhythms and routines, what rhythms brought peace and stability to our home? Which routines felt forced or draining? How did I balance productivity and presence? What small daily practices kept me grounded in truth? Did my mornings and evenings serve my goals or sabotage them? What habits do I want to carry forward into 2026? What do I need to reset or release? And how can I build rhythm that aligns with my values, not just my calendar? That makes me think of a podcast that we did way back when the podcast started on managing your calendar. Again, it's another one that I can tag here in the show notes. And then the last set of questions, friends, is on rest and renewal. How did I rest this year? Truly rest, not just collapse at the end of the day. What steals my peace most often? When did I feel most at ease or closest to God's presence? How did I practice Sabbath or soul rest? What brings me genuine refreshment spiritually, mentally, and physically? What needs to change to create space for more margin and less driving? Where have I been operating out of depletion instead of overflow? And lastly, what does rest look like for me in this next season? So a lot of questions. You could even just pick a couple from each section there. Again, I'll include that PDF for you to look at in the show notes. And then I have one also that's just super fun that you can go over with your kids, a little easier for them to comprehend and broken down into some different categories. Gratitude and joy. What made you smile the most this year? Who made you laugh a lot? What was your favorite memory from this year? What's something that someone did for you that made you feel loved? What's one thing you're thankful to God for right now? On growth and learning, what's something new you learned this year in school, at home, or in your faith? What's something that used to be hard for you that's gotten easier? What's something you're proud of yourself for doing or trying? What mistake or hard moment taught you something valuable in faith and character? Where did you feel close to God this year? What's one way that you saw God help our family this year? What's something kind or brave that you did that no one else noticed but God did? And who in your life helped you grow in your faith on family and friendship? What's one memory from this last year that makes you thankful for our family? What's something you love about each person in our family? What's something that we did together that you'll never forget? What's one thing that makes you feel loved at home? And what's a way that you can show kindness to friends or siblings next year? And then finally, on dreams and hopes for 2026. What are you most excited about for the new year? What's one new thing you'd love to try or do in 2026? What's a dream you want to pray about together as a family? And how do you want to grow closer to God this next year? And I just, again, I love creating space to be able to have some of these intentional conversations that in the day-to-day can just be hard to have. Maybe you keep this in your car and you ask your kids when you're driving. Like I said, maybe you take a couple questions every night as you sit for dinner. Um, some other just ways that you can do this is a family journal where you literally have a question at the top of the journal page and you have the kids throughout the day go write their answers and you keep those precious things. Obviously, again, depending upon what age your kids are. Love the idea of a date one-on-one, a gratitude tree. Write answers on paper leaves or ornaments and hang them from a tree or a branch in your house as we come into this Thanksgiving season. Write those out on little post-it note size cards and let your kids write their answers and drop them into a mason jar and pull those out a couple times a week to read them. So many different ways that you can go through this. But just a really great way when we stop and we slow down and we reflect and we ponder and we look at everything through these lenses of gratitude, growth, and grace, how it sets us up just to come in to the next year, not feeling discouraged, not feeling like we dropped all the balls, but really being able just to be focused on, okay, a lot of really good things happened. Even in hard or what some might call bad years, when we look down in the nitty-gritty and we answer some of these questions, you will see God's faithfulness, his goodness. You will see things that you did that as bad as you're feeling about where you ended up, if you're not in a good place for this year, you will find things of growth and gratitude and grace that will allow you to change that demeanor. A couple of final thoughts as you start thinking about the things that you want to set out to do in 2026. I have always loved the concept of finding a word or choosing a word for the year. I haven't done it every year. The years that I have, I've been grateful that I have. It's not something I reflect on every single day. And in the years that I felt like I really had to struggle to figure out what it was, I just didn't do it. The years where a word has just really felt like God was giving it to me over and over. Two years ago, the word was rest and I didn't do a great job resting the year that I made that. And so this year refocused on that and feel like God is really teaching me about what that looks like and reshaping my whole thought process around rest and slowing down. I also love the concept of setting rhythms instead of resolutions. What are rhythms? And again, going back to habits of the household, what are rhythms that we want to set into place? Resolutions often they feel like something we're gonna do and accomplish and checkmark where rhythms more become a part of who we are. So for instance, I want to read through the Bible in a year. It's a great resolution and it can become very much a checklist thing, but a rhythm of I want to commit to spending 10 to 15 minutes every single day in God's Word becomes a rhythm in my day because I usually will find a way to create a rhythm in that of I make my morning coffee and I grab my Bible. And then when it comes into the next year, just because I read through the Bible in a year this year doesn't mean that now check resolution accomplished, goal accomplished. No, instead it's become a rhythm that I will just continue into the next year and set some new goals and parameters around what I want it to look like. And then ask God, what do you want to grow me in this year? I think sometimes we have a lot of ideas about where we're falling short or where we need to be putting our energy and time. And sometimes we just need to slow down enough to ask God, these are some things that I'm thinking, these are some goals that I have, but where are the areas that you really want to grow me at this year in all of my different roles, in my role as a mom, my role as a wife, my role as a businesswoman and uh volunteer at the church, all the different things that it could be. I think it's so great just to sit and ask yourself that question and be willing to listen, be willing to be silent, be willing to think through the different things that he might have for you as you go into 2026. And again, I know that at this time of year, um, there are a lot of mamas who probably feel behind, who feel tired, who feel unseen, who feel like I cannot put one more thing on my plate. I'm constantly failing myself. I don't want to set another goal. I'm barely making it through. And I just want every one of you to know that even if this year was messy, that God wastes nothing. And that sometimes in the hardest, messiest seasons of our life, the deepest growth comes because number one, it points out our unbelievable dependence that we need to have on God as our source of all things, our strength, our hope, our joy, just our ultimate dependence on Him. And also sometimes the hardest seasons teach us the greatest lessons about how strong we are, about how much we actually can overcome, about just how much grit we have in the seasons of parenting where it is literally all you can do to get out of bed in the morning because you're exhausted and the to-do list feels overwhelming. And so many people are depending on you for every single detail of their life. I know that it can feel overwhelming. And for those people, I want to give you grace that a new year doesn't mean we used to have the saying that we we still hear it all the time. I have stopped saying it because it doesn't resonate well with me anymore. But new year, new you. And I'm like, no, you don't, you don't need a new you. You don't need a new you next year. You need the same you being refined, looking for those areas of small growth. We don't have to have transformation stories every year in our lives of the huge things that we accomplish. I think setting up a couple of rhythms that allow you to show up better every day as a child of God, as a parent of your children, as a spouse to your significant other, just the small little rhythms in your life, this the getting rid of things that aren't serving you. Again, when you go back and you look at those questions, there are some really impactful questions about where did most of my time go and did it serve me? Was it on the things that matters most? Again, every blasted year. For me, the thing that I come back to is managing technology. And I just believe, friends, that we're just in a stage of the world that this is going to be something that we wrestle with probably every single year when it comes to resolutions. And if you're somebody that feels like you have totally mastered this technology thing, man, reach out, send me a message, tell me what you're doing because I just feel every day we're on these devices all day for everything for the camera, the calendar, the banking apps, the alarm clocks, the music, the resources, the team, sport chats. It's everything. And it's hard to create balance there. And there's just gonna be things that every year we're re-evaluating, we're asking God to grow us. We're looking through all of it with a lens of grace. And the verse that came to me that I just want to end us with today, as we set out just to have this next six, seven weeks of reflection, whether you sit down and you do it intentionally with these questions, or just as you go throughout your days and through the season of Thanksgiving and Christmas, but the verse is Lamentations 3, 22 through 23. The steadfast love of the Lord, it never ceases. His mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. And the mercies are new every morning. It's every morning, it's every year, it's every decade. It's just that powerful reminder that every day is a new beginning, it's a new start. And I know that the day-to-day of life can be overwhelming, but I just I really pray that each of you would just take some time reflecting on just the goodness of God, even in some of the more difficult seasons that you've had to walk this last year, and that you would just be able to reflect on just the beautiful moments in your home, outside of your home, the internal growth that you've done, and that this would just be a beautiful time for you and your family as you reflect on 2025. So it has been just another great year to be together. We will wrap up next week with the final episode of season two, and then we'll hit the ground running again in season three. It has been just an honor to continue to be here week after week with you and to be able to bring so many amazing people here for interviews and to learn from. And I'm just excited about what God is already working to do here on the podcast in season three as we come into 2026. And friends, I know that I say this a lot at the end. Another podcast that I listen to, he says it so great. He always says, giving a rating or review to the podcast costs you nothing, only takes a couple of seconds, but it is the gift that allows other people to find a community like this one for people who are looking to cultivate strong families, find this podcast in their algorithms. And so if you would be so kind as we end this season, this week and next, to take just a few seconds and give us a five-star rating, write a review if the podcast has impacted you, share it with others and excited to see what's going to happen in season three as we continue to just show up here every day with the goal of cultivating strong families together. So until next week, friend, take care.