My grandmother (“Oma”) passed away just before Thanksgiving in 2023. If she were still alive, she would be turning 101 at the end of this month. I still miss her. But there are little reminders of her all over my life; this blog is one of them.

Oma never read my blog, but she was one of the first people outside of my teachers to read and celebrate my writing. In my teens and early twenties, I took several overseas vacations with my parents and brother, and I documented those trips in thorough journals that my dad had printed into books for Oma to peruse. Oma loved reliving our travels through those journals, and in her final years, my conversations with her were largely dominated by her effusive praise for my vacation musings (and, later, for my captions on the Chatbooks I filled with photos of the kids). In all honesty, Oma probably would have offered gushing approval for my typed recapitulation of the phone book, but her encouragement was alluring and I took it to heart. In her eyes, I was a writer and that meant more to me than even she knew.

Shortly after Luke and I were married in late 2008, Luke began echoing Oma’s celebration of my writing and encouraged me to take it a step further. He introduced me to the newly emergent world of blogs (RIP Google Reader) and said I had what it took to start one of my own. He had the technical skills to set me up; I just needed to provide the words. I dabbled with the idea for a handful of years, making a few false starts before launching my personal blog in August of 2013.

What different times those were—for the world at large, and particularly for the online space. I’ve changed, too, and so has my writing. If you’ve been with me from the beginning, you have followed along as I became a mom (and then a mom to twins and, in the biggest twist of all, a mom to four); stepped away from teaching; moved to Texas; began homeschooling my kids; explored new interests; walked through many iterations of my faith; went through numerous ups and downs with my mental health; and much more—most (though not all) of it documented right here.

Out of necessity, my approach to writing has also changed in these last 12.5 years. In my earliest blogging days, I would camp out in a coffee shop where I’d spend unlimited stretches of time carefully crafting every post. Even the shortest essays took me hours to write. I agonized over each word, carefully composing my thoughts and editing on repeat until I’d arrived at something I deemed worthy of public consumption. As my household obligations have grown and the time I can dedicate to writing has declined, I have needed to pick up the pace. Gone are the days of pouring all of myself into this hobby that brings great personal fulfillment but zero financial incentive. Now I grab snatches of writing time after the kids are in bed or for an hour on the weekend while they hang out in ChildWatch at the Y. I can no longer edit each post within an inch of its life and have had to make peace with the many grammatical errors and typos that inevitably slip through.

While the amount of time I spend blogging has dwindled over the years, my list of ideas never did. I always had plenty that I wanted to say, if not always enough time to spend saying it. Lately, though, that has changed. I can’t point to a single cause. It may be demoralization brought on by AI (why bother writing words of my own when the bots could say it so much better?). Maybe it’s fear over saying the wrong thing in these polarized political times (who am I to offer opinions on subjects I hardly understand, especially when those opinions are sure to spark anger from readers?). It could be the simple fact that my “In Real Life” world is so much fuller, leaving me less inclined to spend my free time on an internet that I no longer recognize and rarely even like (am I a hypocrite for contributing to the noisiness of an on-line world that I regularly disparage?).

Perhaps the biggest hangup of all is that I feel like I’ve already said everything I came to say. Why perpetuate the repetition, echoing the same ideas again and again? This question was in the background of my thoughts last week when I sat down for my nightly time in God’s Word. This year I’m doing a slow-read through the New Testament with this devotional that tracks Jesus’ life and ministry through all four Gospels at once. In other words, instead of reading through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in that order, I am reading about a part of Jesus’ life (His birth, His miracles, the Sermon on the Mount, etc.) from two or three sources in one sitting. This approach to Scripture emphasizes something that might easily be missed when reading the New Testament in published order: the Bible is very repetitive! Many of the accounts of Jesus’ ministry are recorded verbatim by two or three of the Gospel writers. But the repetition is a feature, not a bug: the reiteration lends authenticity to their message, while also proving helpful for those of us (raising my hand here!) who need to hear something more than once before it truly sinks in.

Stepping back from my Scripture reading, I began to think about the prominence of repetition in other areas. Romance readers love the genre because the stories are predicable: different tropes, but always the same outcome. We see repetition in Hallmark movies (I don’t watch them, but from what I’ve heard they’re all variations of the same story) and in our daily rhythms (even if you aren’t a huge fan of routine, I’m sure there is a lot of repetition in your days—we’d all go mad without some semblance of structure) and in the foods that we eat (I’m certain there are exceptions out there, but most of us eat the same handful of foods each week). There’s a reason that we all love the familiarity of a tradition, why we gravitate to the same one or two pairs of jeans, why we tell our children we love them each night even though they’ve heard our I Love You’s a million times. Even the natural world is dominated by repetition, which can be seen in the cycling of the seasons and the tides, the tessellations of honeycombs and reptile skin, the symmetry of a butterfly or of the human face. Repetition is everywhere. . . on repeat!

One thing that has not changed over more than a decade of blogging is the meandering nature of my thoughts and my writing. . . which is to say that my pondering of the marvels and benefits of repetition led right back to my current quandary of what to do when you’ve said all that you came to say. The answer? Say it again. If it was worth saying (writing) once, it’s worth repeating. Perhaps my words will reach new ears, or maybe the slight variation on a theme will strike a different chord with someone who heard it before but needed to hear it again. At the very least, I know that I will benefit from the repetition. If I feel an idea pressing to be explored, then it’s still something I need to write—maybe not for the first time, but certainly in a new way from a writer who has seen and experienced a fraction more of life and is ready to offer a new take on an old idea.

Which leads to the question of what you can expect from this space in 2026. It will come as no surprise to hear that this year, you can look forward to (drumroll please. . . ) more of the same! I’ll still be bringing plenty of book talk—from book reviews to bookish reflections—and I will never stop sharing about my life and my kids. There will be assorted musings on faith and culture and parenting—a lot of which you’ve heard before, with zero apologies for repeating the things that need to be said. If that’s not your cup of tea, I totally understand; go in peace. But despite all my misgivings and hangups and second-guessing, I don’t think it’s time to hang up my writing hat just yet. I am grateful for this small platform I’ve been given, and hope to continue stewarding it in the best way I can.

I have said it before, and it bears repeating: thank you for reading here. Your readership means the world to me. I’ll keep showing up as best as I can and I’m honored that you have chosen to do the same.