My Favorites of 2025
Big things that happened each month:
Jan: Ladies conference at church
Feb: political stuff, Fernanda’s family tragedy
March: spring break with Charbonnels
April: cabin camping and trampoline
May: caids album released
June: Brazil
July: Connecticut and cruise
August: garden and 5k
September: soccer, family bike rides
October: fall break Otherworld, World Renewal Celebration
Nov: teaching English, all the refugee stuff
Dec: all the lovely holidays
Podcasts
Best episodes: The ongoing and intimate relationship between grief and imagination (Rob Bell), Winners (This American Life), Grief: an empty ocean (Digging in the Dirt), When thoughts and prayers are not enough and Lean in: a conversation (Voxology), and of course, my favorite podcast: Holy Post.
I produced 6 podcast episodes (honestly, when they changed my system they just messed up the whole thing…still trying to recover), including redoing my “Check the box” audiobook—now that my girls are older! My favorite episode of mine was The Mindshift Happened.
Blogs
My favorite blogs of others (I like almost all the things these people post, but I’ll just choose one each to highlight)
The incredible power of positive childhood experiences (A life Overseas)
God Mend thine every flaw (Marilyn R. Gardner)
My thoughts on foreign aid, immigration, and American privilege (Amy Medina)
What happens when “Coming legally” isn’t enough? (Brittany Farrington)
Maintaining faithful Determination in a world of chaos (Benjamin cremer)
How to stay intentionally informed (Courtney Martin)
More than a Machine (Kate bowler)
This year, over my 8 blogs, I wrote 101 blogs:). My favorites were: all my books posts, especially my favorite of the year, putting together my best Black History Month resources, and my best Immigration resources/Bible study, Changing Identities, Unchanging God, and really…all of the posts, written through tears, that have brushed up on my political grief this year on Whatever-Wednesday.
Vlogs
This year I made 40 vlogs about our life (the December ones will come this weekend, hopefully). The most popular one was this one (I don’t do a good job promoting these-with 100 views), but I do have 6 videos with 10k views or more (one over 100k).
Instagram/Facebook
I had 216 posts on Instagram (that also went to Facebook), with 20 reels. The most watched reel was 800+-something that Damerson made while I was in Brazil about our trip. I really had a lot of posts that I worked hard on and loved—most of them being ones I also had as blog posts.
World Renewal Stuff
It is cool because when you love what you do, you are also really proud of what you created for work:). My favorites were the 2025 magazine, orientation booklet, advocacy booklet, and Missionary advent