Rich in Love

2025 was a financially challenging year. After five years, my employer decided to reduce my FTE by half, then raise it to .8FTE halfway through the year. I took on a second job as a swim instructor so I had enough to just barely make ends meet, before my role was ultimately eliminated at the end of December 2025.

I was disappointed, of course, with an employer I had faithfully worked for for what would ultimately span more than five and a half years. I was exhausted by a difficult job search made harder by a presidential administration's racist rhetoric. I was annoyed that I had found myself navigating a season of job hunting, again, after having endured a similar season post-graduate school, seven years before.

I have found that sometimes God allows us to walk through trying times, and builds our character to prepare us for the next step in our lives. Almost always, I have found, He sends us people to come alongside us along the way.

This past year, my generous parents partnered with me, ensuring me I would not miss a mortgage payment. One of my best friends offered money, which I refused. Heart sisters sent packages with small comforts in the mail. Members of my community treated me to meals. People showed up as the hands and feet of Christ, inspiring hope, even as God called me to continue serving my spiritual community throughout my own season of need.

In my neediness, God gave me an embodied experience of what it means to experience want, and expanded my heart for the people he would be calling me to serve...the poor, the desolate, and the needy. He prepared a heart which had been broken by the loss of a great love to pivot into hope and joy again. He empowered my heart to be able to serve others from a place of not only care, but understanding, from having walked through seasons of neediness myself.

Then he launched me into the role which he had been preparing for me...the role which he had been preparing me for.

Though the road had been long and challenging, as I worked two jobs and applied for 140 more, it would be in God's timing that I would be brought into a new season, one in which I would no longer "be" the needy but would be equipped as a pastoral resident to serve the poor, the desolate, and the needy in our church. I begin in this role in February 2026.

Despite all of the financial (and spiritual) challenges, 2025 will go down in my history books as one in which I realized and experienced how very rich I am in love.

2026 is the "Year of the Horse"...and she has come galloping in. I'm excited to discover what else she might bring with her this year.