Friend, I don’t know if 2021 was a year of beautiful and hopeful things for you, or if it included pain, heartache, and grief. I do know that our pondering of the year behind us does not have to end with the overwhelmingly messy, hard, and (sometimes paradoxically) beautiful things of this world. Instead, we are invited to still ourselves—to slow down and breathe.

Brokenness is not where this ends, though. When years of walls are shattered and strewn about, choices have to be made. Will we rebuild what was broken exactly the way it was before? OR Will we choose to restore what was broken into something stronger and more beautiful? This time, I chose the latter.