{12/20 Update at end of post}
As 2025 draws to a close, I am in awe of God's faithfulness and kindness to our family. At the beginning of the year, I prayerfully chose a word for the year: wait.
I had felt God working on my heart in the area of patience and waiting on His timing a lot in the lead up to the new year and believed this year would be a year of waiting on God and learning that more deeply. So I posted this verse in our kitchen.
“The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him.”
Lamentations 3:25 ESV
The goal was to remind myself when the waiting got frustrating, that the waiting, when it is waiting on God, is truly good.
This year, I have seen His goodness again and again, mostly but fittingly, in the small, ordinary ways. It is revealed in my children growing healthy and strong, in a deep peace in the home and life God has given, in goals set and slowly being grown into, in goals failed and attempted and failed and attempted, in my own sin being revealed so very gently, and in provision and joy in it all. Most of all it is revealed in the fact that the victories of habit, heart and home have seen are fully and completely a work of God's Spirit, not human effort.
As I have waited on God this year, I have been repeatedly humbled by God's patient growing me. I have watched habits come to fruition that in struggled for decades to build and I have seen God show me new areas of needed growth and habit formation where I still struggle deeply.
In waiting on God and being patient for His timing, He has shown me the deep and gentle patience He has always had with me. And I am humbled and grateful.
To recap the year I thought I would share a bit of each person in our family, both as an update and as a marker of remembrance of the goodness of God this year.
Esther:
Our precious baby is now 18 months old. She is sweet and spicy, fun and focused, but almost never cuddly. She started walking three days before she turned one and now is running, climbing, dancing and keeping mommy and daddy on their toes. As she has from the beginning, she surprises us regularly with her perceptiveness and depth of understanding of what is going on around her. She loves her sleep and while she is wildly social, she also regularly needs space to calm down and decompress. Baby dolls and books are her favorite activities, and she is frequently found running from person to person with a book begging to be read to!
Annie:
This sweet girl has grown up from toddlerhood over the past year. She is as energetic and independent as ever, but also as clutzy as ever, resulting in her two front teeth being prematurely loose. She is undaunted in her play and can regularly be found chasing her brothers, jumping off the couch, and dancing to music. Annie also loves books and will listen to most anything be read aloud. As a dedicated big sister, she loves to help feed or play with Esther, and as the little sister to two big brothers, she is quite persistent in keeping up with them both. She loves the water and took swim lessons for the first time last spring, to her endless delight!
Peter:
While our now eight year old is not too fond of being in front of the camera, this boy loves to be silly, tease and spend time with his family and friends. He continues to love board games, has became a more independent swimmer this year, has begun learning piano, and competed in cross country for the first time. He loved it! His reading abilities have exploded, but he still loves the outdoors as much as ever. He is our dedicated "critter handler" and has happily rescued Mommy and Annie from frogs, bugs, worms, and snakes this past year. He is so gentle with his sisters and loves to play with them and make them laugh. He has also begun learning how to cook lunch for the family and is loving the responsibility and new skill!
James:
This boy raises the bar for himself and the rest of our family regularly. He is a dedicated oldest brother and is tender and enthusiastic in caring for his sisters. He continues to be best friends with his brother and can either be found reading or playing out imaginary stories in his head most of the time. He is a voracious reader and we can't keep enough books in the house to satisfy his reading appetite. Cross country and piano were also a new experiences for him this year and he is being challenged and thriving in both! He has developed a love of cooking, and has earned the title of best scrambled egg maker in the family! Also developing this past year is his love of drawing, particularly when he can draw Pokemon, and his joy in this art is so fun!
Travis and Alesha:
(More commonly known as mommy and daddy)
We crossed 14 years of marriage and 17 years since we started dating this spring, and now have spent half our lives together. What a gift! We are so thankful that we can continue to learn to communicate and work together better. We worked on several projects together this year, including lots of reorganizing, painting bunk beds, and refinishing our dining room table. It is a gift to enjoy working together with your spouse and we truly do!
Travis has picked up another instrument this year, piano, and is getting very good already. While I love hearing him play, I fear I won't be the best pianist in the house for too much longer.
I have doubled-down on my favorite hobby of knitting and spent time honing and working to develop my skill as a homeschool mom. I love learning about teaching and am so grateful that I get to teach my own children.
While our lives are not perfect, we serve a God who corrects, grows and strengthens us when we ask, and He is all we truly need. Yet He has blessed us above and beyond. We are humbled and grateful!
Praying you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and find yourselves equally overwhelmed with God's goodness!
I wrote this post in mid-November, however, on December 17th we experienced a major life event that we wanted to update you all on.
At about 1:20 AM on a Wednesday morning, a tree fell on our house. We are all okay!
It hit our bedroom where Travis and I were attempting to sleep through the crazy windstorm, but praise God it didn't fall into the kids room or directly hit Travis and I. The ceiling (sheetrock and insulation) did collapse on top of us, but by God's grace we were uninjured.
We got the kids up and I took them to my parents house to spend the night and next day. Travis stayed at home and did what he could in the night and then waited for morning along with our renters, whose unit was unharmed. God is so good that we are all okay and the construction company my brother is a co-owner of came first thing in the morning to remove much of the tree and tarp it to keep water out. Several of Travis' friends and coworkers showed up with coffee and breakfast and some stayed all morning to help clean out our bedroom and haul the rounds of wood being removed from the roof.
We will likely need a whole new roof, but we are praising God we are all safe and okay! The more I see the damage in daylight and look at pictures, the more that feels like a miracle and I am so grateful! Our renters lost one of their cars to the top of the tree when it broke in half over the peak of our house and came down in over the front of the house, but Travis' car is still drivable.
All our clothes and the girls clothes were in our bedroom and a friend with a girl just Annie's age, packed a bag of clothes for each of us to borrow while I sort through the process of cleaning our clothes, and, in the case of the girls, replacing. Insurance so far has been really good to work with and we are praying it continues to be a smooth process. Praise God the co-owner with my brother of the construction company we are using has a lot of experience working with insurance companies in these kinds of situations.
Our lives, and my parents' lives, since we are currently living with them, have definitely flipped upside down the past few days, but it feels like nearly every hour we see new ways, major and seemly insignificant, that God had grace on us and is blessing us throughout this situation. For example, Travis insisted in storing our kids wrapped presents in the office at the front of the house instead of our closet and under our bed like I suggested. God has truly cared for us so kindly this week!
We cherish your prayers as we walk the process of working with insurance and repairing our home, while living with my parents.
Merry Christmas! God is with us!
Blessings,
Alesha and the Sinks Family
