A New Year’s Reflection

New Year’s Eve is supposed to be about celebration.
Champagne (or if you’re like me, electric lettuce—no judgment).
Resolutions. Looking ahead with excitement.
Righting the wrongs of the past year.
Asking yourself: What can I improve in the year ahead?

But this year, for me, it’s about reflection.

Because the past year stripped me down in ways I never expected.

I spent most of it trying—and failing—to find stable work. Interview after interview. Hope followed by silence. Doors that seemed open one moment slammed shut the next. Each rejection didn’t just hurt professionally; it chipped away at my confidence and my sense of self-worth in general.

What scared me most wasn’t the rejection.

It was the fear underneath it all.

The fear of losing my home.
The fear of not being able to provide.
The fear of letting my family down.

So I did what survival demanded.

I drove ride-share and food delivery. I bartended. I worked nights, weekends—whatever I could get. I kept moving because stopping felt dangerous. From the outside, it probably looked like hustle. Inside, it felt like desperation.

The grind took its toll.

Slowly, quietly, I slipped into a depression I didn’t fully recognize until I was already deep in it. I didn’t want to die—but I also didn’t want to keep living. That sentence is hard to write, but it’s the truth. I was exhausted in a way sleep couldn’t fix. Hope felt distant. Joy felt borrowed.

And yet, New Year’s Eve forces you to pause.

Somewhere in the middle of that darkness, a good friend sat with me and talked about faith. Not in a way that tried to fix me. Not with easy answers. Just a real conversation about God, suffering, and what it means to trust when everything feels uncertain.

That conversation changed my mindset.

Not immediately—but things did start to shift. Subtle changes, but unmistakable ones… if that makes sense.

I stopped seeing my struggle as proof that I was failing and started seeing it as a season that was shaping me. As the late DMX said, “God won’t walk you to what He won’t walk you through.”

I realized how tightly I had tied my worth to outcomes—jobs, income, stability—and how fragile that made me when those things disappeared. I had put an unhealthy amount of stock in what people thought of me and allowed their judgment to assign value to my life.

Which is disgustingly unhealthy.

I leaned into my faith differently after that. Not perfectly. Not consistently at first. But sincerely. I started trusting that even when I couldn’t see the next step, God could.

I did this not just with sincerity, but with intention.

The words you speak—and the ones you repeat to yourself—have a direct impact on your outcome.

Friends stepped in. Help showed up. Humility replaced pride. And slowly—sometimes painfully slowly—things began to change.

I was blessed to find a great job that brought stability back into my life at exactly the right time. A reminder that provision doesn’t always arrive when we want it, but often arrives exactly when we need it.

As I stand on the edge of a new year, things still aren’t perfect. Life is still life. But it is so much better than it was.

Sometimes I stop and think about it, and I cry. Like full-on ugly cry—Vanderbeek, or whatever his name was on Dawson’s Creek—about how beautiful life really is, even with the dark times.

This year taught me how close despair can come—and how powerful hope really is. It taught me the value of community, the strength of faith, and the grace that shows up when you finally admit you can’t do it alone.

So tonight, I’m not making flashy resolutions.

I’m carrying gratitude into the new year.
I’m carrying humility.
I’m carrying faith.

And if you’re reading this on your own New Year’s Eve—especially if this year nearly broke you—I want you to know this:

You made it.

Even if you crawled here.

Even if you’re still unsure what comes next.

Sometimes the greatest victory isn’t what you gained this year.

It’s what you survived.

Happy New Year.