To Exit With Grace

 It somehow feels oddly fitting that the year should end with an unusual cold snap around these parts. That winter should settle in with such force and chill, driving us all to cozy inside and wait out the drafts and darkness with a forever-hope in warmer days to come with the impending new year. Communities just north of where I live have been pounded by hurricane-force winds off and on for weeks, causing the temperate to plummet with the wind chill and wreaking havoc on the towns and their residents. It's been a season of resilience - of accepting factors we cannot change and enduring unwanted disruption with a heart of courage. 

It's funny how this seems to reflect the latter half of my whole year. Exiting 2025 with biting cold and inconvenient realities has been a picture of life itself in the past several months. Almost weekly, more news has dropped of yet another loss or transition or unexpected change that's required a level of adaptation I did not anticipate just a few weeks before. The fact that, as I write this, the whine of a siren is heard in my neighborhood feels strangely appropriate. Since September, seven families I personally know have had to bid goodbye to a loved one... three of them very suddenly. There have been surprising diagnoses, family shifts, injuries and surgeries, hardships all around. It feels like it's been one continuous string of ache and letting go... and it's gotten to a point where there's so much in so little a time that one can't even process the emotions before something else descends. The numbness is real. 

The other day I was listening to a panel discussion that touched on the topic of exits - that how we end often determines the way we will step into the next thing God has for us. Will we hold on too tightly and focus solely on what we've lost or will we mourn with hope, turning our faces toward the coming sunrise and walk through the next chapter's opening with faith and bravery and expectation of what is still possible. I appreciated listening to the panel's take on this because it certainly seems like that is what's happening right now in my little world. I can't even begin to understand what God is up to in this season; I only know, from a human standpoint, that it hurts. A lot. But I also know that the invitation to choose whether or not I will exit these past memories with special people and life as I've so long known it to be rests with me. I get to decide what happens next. What I do with this longing, this grieving, this releasing. 

For whatever Divinely-known reason, God has asked much of me in the way of loss for many years. I can't even begin to untangle the purposes behind why He has allowed so many endings to occur and just what exactly He's been after in this valley time of my life that has seemed never-ending. I stopped years ago trying to beg Him for answers and explanations. I realized that attempting to pry the reasons out of God just so I could have peace of mind was the wrong approach. I came to learn that God didn't owe me an explanation and sometimes, what He offers us instead of answers is simply the gift of Himself. God with us always. 

So many of our suddenlys feel undesirable. We do not see them coming and we only wish for them to go away. We fight them. We grieve them. We were built for eternity and for things that last and this constant cycle of remove and release isn't to our liking. The beginnings are always oh, so much more enjoyable. But what I'm starting to see is that not every suddenly is necessarily negative. Rather, if we will treat it as such, the exits hold the potential for something fresh to be born if only we will lean in. All openings, woundings, goodbyes are part of the inevitable - seasons that exchange and move from one to the next, reminding us that nothing in this world is permanent... except the presence of the One who sits with us through it all. A suddenly may seem like everything is falling apart but perhaps, it's actually falling together into something beautiful. After all, the announcement of the greatest news ever - the birth of the King who would make a way for our rising - was made in the pitch-black of darkest night... a suddenly that forever changed the course of history. In the most broken places, God is still moving. 

This is the treasure of the snow: to see nothing of life on the surface but to believe that something is stirring below and Spring's thaw is coming always. 

Maybe your year has been one giant victory parade with nothing but wins and happiness and cheer and you can't wait to keep it going into next year. But equally possible, perhaps you're like me and you kind of just want the year to slip on by so you can start afresh and pray for brighter beginnings as the calendar switches. Yet whether your exit is coming or has already arrived, the truth remains the same: will you move from the old to the new gracefully? And, for those whose hearts are aching, the additional challenge presents itself: will you hold gratitude with your grief and find it within your soul to offer a sacrifice of praise when you least feel like it? 

2026 is on the way, friends. We do not know what it will hold. These last few weeks in my own life have reminded me of that. But we do know Who holds it all as He also holds our hand every step of the way. We can leave an unknown future to a known God and trust that we will be loved and cared for and held every bit of the journey, whatever it brings. And that hope in the dark gives our spirits a reason to still sing.