Birthday Reflections | I'm the Gift?

God Gave Me the Greatest Gifts This Year

Today is my birthday.

And for the first time in nearly 18 months, I realized something this morning: the fog has lifted.

There’s no clean date. No moment I can point to. Just the gradual return of energy. Hope. The capacity to look around at the life we’re still building, post-amputation, and feel something other than survival.

Though survival was real. And survival was the work.

I almost wrote this post the way you’re supposed to write birthday posts. Gratitude list. Highlights. Lessons learned in a tidy, shareable format.

I couldn’t.

Not because there’s nothing to be grateful for... there’s plenty. But because the truest thing I can say about this year is that I cannot point to highlights. The shock of Kevin’s amputation wore off. Reality settled in. And we kept walking.

That’s not a milestone. That’s not content.

But it’s the whole story.

Here’s what I didn’t expect: I have more uncertainty than I’ve ever had in my life. About what’s next. About the vision I’m building. About what the coming year will require of us.

And I have more peace than I’ve ever had.

Both. At the same time. Not in spite of each other... because of each other.

The peace isn’t from having it figured out. It’s from finally accepting that I don’t have to.

Because God has been in this. Not on the sidelines. Not as comfort I reach for when things get hard. In it. He’s been the operating system underneath every step of this season... and the closer I get to the end of this chapter, the more I can see His fingerprints on parts I didn’t recognize at the time.

He keeps reassuring me. Quietly. Persistently. Not with promises that everything will be easy. With something deeper. “I’ve got this. Keep going.”

That’s it. That’s the whole message. And somehow it’s enough.

Here’s what nobody warned me about: a hard season doesn’t just test your faith. It transforms it.

My prayers don’t sound the way they used to. They’re shorter. Stripped down. More honest. There’s less of me trying to convince God of something, and more of me actually listening. I argue less. I sit longer. And when the Holy Spirit speaks, I recognize the voice faster than I ever have.

My discernment is sharper. Not because I’m spiritually more advanced. Because I had to use it. Daily. In real decisions with real weight. I used to second-guess what I already knew. Now I move on it. That’s the difference 18 months of trial will make.

My faith hasn’t just held me through this season. It’s grown me inside of it.

That’s the gift I didn’t ask for. The one I wouldn’t trade now that I have it.

My ADHD still does what it does. The overthinking loop. The second-guessing. The overwhelm that crashes in when I’m finally still enough to feel it. It’s better than it’s been. But it’s not broken. I still have moments where I genuinely wonder if I’ll be crushed under the weight of everything.

And then I’m not. Because He’s there. Every time.

That’s the part nobody talks about. The strength isn’t dramatic. It’s not a triumph moment. It’s just the next breath. The next step. The next day where you wake up and realize you’re still here... and so is He.

(Yes, I realize I’m writing a piece about not having a highlight reel and effectively making it a highlight. I get the irony.)

Here’s what I’m taking into this next year:

A new vision. One that genuinely delights me. I’ll share more of it as it unfolds, but I’ll say this much: it’s built on what this season taught me, not what it took from me. And every piece of it has God’s fingerprints on it... because I’m not building it alone, and I’m not building it from striving anymore.

More confidence to show up as the gift. Birthdays come with the expectation of receiving. I want to be received in a different way... through presence, service, the way I move through rooms. (I’m not turning down actual gifts, let’s be clear about that.)

And the willingness to keep walking when I can’t see the path. Because that’s what this year proved God and I can do together.

Here’s what hit me as I was writing this.

We treat birthdays like the one day we’re supposed to receive. Set apart. Special. Marked.

But God doesn’t work on a calendar.

The gifts He’s given me through this season... peace I didn’t earn. Discernment I didn’t have before. A faith that’s been refined instead of broken. A vision that genuinely delights me. A Him who shows up every single time I’m about to crumble under the weight.

None of those arrived today.

He’s been handing them to me every day of this season. I just finally have the stillness to see them.

That’s the real gift of this birthday. Not that today is special. That every day already was.

I just couldn’t see it through the fog.

Now here’s the part where I ask for something:

If you’ve been reading me for a while... if anything I’ve written has met you in your own season... the greatest gift you can give me on my birthday isn’t on a registry.

Share this. Subscribe to this Substack. Forward it to one person who needs to hear that the fog lifts. Bring someone else into this conversation.

Because what’s coming in this next chapter... I want you here for it. The vision I’m building from - the vision God gave me. The work I’m doing. The way God is partnering with me & moving through all of it. You’re going to want to be in the room.

If you’re in your own fog right now due to a challenging season... I want you to hear this:

The fog lifts. Not all at once. Not because you forced it. Because you kept walking when you couldn’t see. Because God was already on the other side of it before you arrived.

You don’t have to point to a highlight to prove you’re alive. You don’t have to perform recovery to deserve to keep going. You just have to take the next breath... and trust the One who gave it to you.

That’s the work. That’s the whole work. And it counts.

Happy birthday to me. And to anyone reading this who is still here against the odds... happy you’re still here, too.

I’m switching up this publication a bit. I am ignoring what the “pro’s” say and doing things my own way… with the Holy Spirit leading, of course! More on that next time!

What’s Ahead:

Why I Deleted my Paid Tier in Substack?

What I Stopped Doing the Day I Actually Started Hearing God