Goodbye 52! A Game-Changer of a Year That Almost Broke Me

It’s the start of my personal new year tomorrow.  I turn 53 on the 7th.   Yip, that is quite a daunting number, but I still maintain that my 50s will be my best decade yet! The “yet” part is very important in that sentence.  I believe that each decade thereafter will be even better than my 50s.  This really helps me look past the number and just be grateful and proud that I have reached it. 🙂  

52 has been the year that nearly broke me, but by God’s Grace, I am still standing and excited about 53.  That’s because it wasn’t all bad. 

Here are my top 5 highlights of 52:

  1. My son was made a school prefect.  It was a great example of how he set himself a goal and did what he needed to do to achieve it.
  2. My son received a subject award for his favourite subject for the second year in a row.
  3. I pushed through my fear and appeared on morning TV twice to do a product promotion.
  4. I learned to ask God different questions to understand what I needed to change to stop certain things from happening in my life, and I did get some answers.  They were definitely not revealed in the way I anticipated.  In all honesty, I also didn’t know how He would answer, but the way He did just wasn’t what I was expecting. 😅
  5. My team at work did me proud with the way they showed up this year.  We had a tough year, but they brought their A-game every day!  I am so proud of them. 

Oh, and a bonus one- I found a new mystery and suspense thriller author.  Her name is Stacy Green, and I am currently reading her Nikki Hunt series. You know you are enjoying a book when you are late to work because you lost track of time while reading. 😂

The lower lights…sigh. 

While I will only mention two, the reality is that these experiences ran back-to-back and spanned over a six month period. 

  1. Going through the process of reapplying for your job.  The stress was worse than I imagined.  I thought I would be ok but nothing quite prepares you for it.
  2. Getting in my own way time and time again. Then God showed me that this is what I had to stop doing.  Sadly, I had to witness someone else doing it to understand my own actions.  It was painful to watch, but now I am aware of how I create my own pain.
  3. There was a third experience. I won’t talk about it except to say that it reinforced my belief… No weapon formed against me shall prosper. God has got my back all the time. 

At the end of it, I am so grateful to have made it thus far.  I am thankful that my son and I had a roof over our heads, food on our table, clothes on our backs, a reliable car to get us from A to B and love in our home.  I had friends, family, and colleagues to support me through it all. Most importantly, I had God going before me every day. 

Photo by Anna Bratiychuk on Unsplash

So cheers to 52. 🥂 Thank you for the lessons and love.  Welcome 53!  Show me what you got! 💃🏽

A Month of Gratitude 2024: Day 30

Two more sleeps until 2024 is over.  What a year it has been!  I am very excited to see what 2025 holds though. 

I got a call to say that my son has shingles this afternoon.  His poor grandparents were up with him most of last night, but thankfully, he is feeling a lot better already. I am so grateful that it wasn’t anything more serious. It’s always such a shock when he gets sick as he has an excellent immune system.  The doctors don’t know us that well because they hardly ever see us. 😂

I am also counting down to my fifty-second birthday on the seventh.   I sometimes sit and think about how old my mum seemed to feel once she hit her fifties.  That was the norm for her generation, though.  I am very very grateful that I get to enjoy my fifties inspired by the generation ahead of me.  Celebrities like Halle Berry and Viola Davis who are turning what it means to be getting older on it’s head.  I love that social media is filled with women who are over forty, who are embracing their age and looking fabulous.  Some are launching modelling careers in their fifties and sixties!  It is so cool to be older now.  I am blessed!

That’s it from me today.  Thanks for popping by. I hope you have had a great day.

Bye for now

31 Days of Gratitude – Day 12

My son is home safe and sound! 🙌🙏. I will definitely sleep a lot better tonight. He is off again in a few days but today we celebrate his safe return!

I just discovered that I failed one of my exams. Not quite a surprise. I guess next year I will have to really focus on it. I enjoy the subject but I just have not enjoyed writing the exams. Next year will be different though.

Today is my gran’s heavenly birthday. She left us 39 years ago but I still remember her so clearly. Her name was Molly. She was small in stature and very quiet but boy was she a strong person. She was clearly an awesome mother too judging by how her kids turned out. I know that she is always watching over us and for this I am grateful. I am also very grateful to her for giving us our dad. We are because she was. 🙏

My late gran, Molly