If you are just starting to read these posts and are wondering why I am doing something as a "first" for each day of the year, you can read more of the story and background HERE.
The first thing that I wanted to do was start the year by memorizing a verse that would be my verse for the year. As I prayed about it I kept coming back to Psalm 65:11 and this was the verse that I chose. It states...
"You crown the year with your goodness and your paths drip with abundance."
There are several deeply personal prayer requests that I (and I am sure you do too) have tucked in my heart for this coming year and the gentle reminder that the year will be crowned with His goodness and that the paths will drip with abundance struck me deeply.
To memorize it I wrote it out several times and have it placed in a few special places that I will see on a constant basis. I don't know about you, but reminding myself and my heart constantly of the truth from God's word is something that I need all of the time.
"Everyday you preach to yourself a gospel of your loneliness, inability, and lack of resources or you faithfully preach to yourself the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ."
//Paul David Tripp//
This year I am looking forward to memorizing more scripture and starting off with this first was the perfect start to this adventure.
Tips for Creating Your Own First Related to This:
*Consider picking a verse to memorize for the year
*Consider memorizing additional scripture verses or a chapter as the year continues
*Write the verse out and place it in a place that you will see it often so it is easy to memorize
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.jpg "want to learn how to play the piano? here's what you need to get started")
The piano is a stunning instrument. Not only does it look great in the home, but it can play
practically any tune. Have a favorite guitar rift? The piano can copy it. The ability to play two
tunes at once means that you can recreate your favorite songs all the way to famous
masterpieces, even if they weren’t originally written as piano songs to begin with.
In short, if there’s any single instrument to learn, the piano is it. It’s versatile and sounds
beautiful, capable of jaunty tunes all the way to moving ballads. It’s also relatively easy to
start learning, so long as you follow this guide:
Essentials You’ll Need to Get Started
Getting the Equipment
To play the piano, you’ll need a piano. Mastering the skill means that you’ll need to invest in
either an acoustic piano or, more likely considering the space of modern homes, a digital
piano or keyboard. There are many great entry-level keyboards out there right now. You can
get one with weighted keys to mimic the experience of playing a real piano or a full digital
keyboard.
Accessories
If you have a digital keyboard, then you’ll automatically have a metronome built-in.
Otherwise, you’ll want to invest in one for yourself. You’ll also want a comfortable chair that’s
been elevated to the right height so that you can adopt the correct piano-playing posture.
Your wrists should be level, for example.
Picking Your Songs
Piano songs can be incredibly complex, but don’t worry. They can also be stripped back into
very easy notes, meaning you can play beginner versions of your favorite songs practically
from the start.
Just have a look at the easy piano songs available. You’ll quickly see you can play top radio
hits all the way to beginner classical music, depending on your taste and preferences.
Learning to Play the Piano
Reading Notes
It’s a good idea to generally get familiar with reading music. It’ll eventually become
instinctive after a while, but to get to that stage, you’ll need to make sure you know what
every symbol means.
Starting Position
The first technique you’ll need to learn is the starting position. This is typically around the
middle C, with your fingers spread across each key evenly.
Essential Exercises
One of the most challenging parts of learning the piano is to build up each hand’s
independence and dexterity. A great way to do this is by practicing Hanon, Trill, scales, and
other finger exercises for a brief period before you start your lesson or practice session.
Start Slow
You can and will naturally start to speed up as you become more practiced. The goal right
now is to get the notes right and to start associating the symbols on the music sheet to the
notes on your keyboard.
Practice
Finally, plan to practice between 15 and 20 minutes every day. This can be done all at once
or broken up into sessions depending on how busy your schedule is.
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.jpg "doing something new everyday of 2025")
Doing something new every single day for a year? Yes, you have read that title of this post correctly.
For this year of 2025 I have purposed to do something new every single day... a "first" if you want to term it for the year.
You may be asking why would I want to do that, and today I wanted to share a bit more about why I am doing this...
Several months ago I was wandering through a used bookstore when I came across a book entitled "I Dare Me". I admit that when I first read the cover title I didn't think much about it. I looked at it, skimmed the cover and admittedly put it back on the shelf. As I kept browsing throughout the bookstore I kept thinking back to that book and eventually wandered back to it. I looked at it again and picked it up and started reading it. The owner of the bookstore laughed and remarked that they too had looked at it more than once. I was intrigued but didn't really feel that I connected deeply with it, but thought it could be an interesting read. It went into my pile and I added it to my reading list. As the months have gone on and I have read the book I realized I resonated deeply with a couple of points that the author made and there were a couple of things that just made sense to me.
1. Her experiences and background (although different) resonated with my own health journey and experiences. She expressed things that I had often thought deeply but never talked about except with those in my immediate circle.
"I had survived having my entire large intestine removed when I was thirty-three. I had survived breast cancer at thirty-five. I survived kidney cancer at age forty-five. I should have been dancing every day like Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain just to be breathing, right? But, I wasn't. Perhaps it was because I had survived all of that I was even more distressed...I didn't have time to move to Italy to find myself or meditate on my navel in Bali..."
This paragraph (condensed) hit me so deeply... for the first time someone had expressed those intense emotions of feeling so grateful for a second chance at life and yet feeling distressed because I don't always feel like Gene Kelly everyday or don't feel like I am doing something "to change the world" each day. I expressed some of this in my post last January (click HERE) all about "after the long illness" but there was a lot behind the scenes that this year I took time to work through and pray through and so reading this just hit me deeply.
2. Stepping into the pain of My Story
In her book Lu Ann spoke of her experience with connecting to her health story/journey. I resonated deeply with her story about connecting back to her health journey. She said...
"As of this writing, I'm a twenty-one year survivor. I tell women who have just been diagnosed with breast cancer, the first year is war. You go to battle for your life. There's surgery, chemo, hair loss, pain, scars. You see fellow survivors who don't make it. You lie awake at night scared.... If you get past the first year, you still think about it every day. Is it back?...You don't trust your body not to turn on you again. You pray your mammograms and X-rays are clean. You hold onto your family....If you're lucky, like me, time goes by. And one day, you actually forget to think about breast cancer. You almost feel guilty about it. You go back to life and work without breast cancer on your mind. Therapists says it's healthy to move on and so you do...I've told my story of being diagnosed with breast cancer many times over the years...but as time went on it sometimes felt like I was talking about someone else. I didn't want to emotionally connect to my thirty-five year-old self. It hurt too much..." //page 74
The pages surrounding Lu Ann's experience was something that brought me to tears. It was eye-opening and it was deeply healing. I realized that it was me. I have shared my story with people around the world, through the blog, and through my books... and somewhere it became almost clinical. Just like her I felt like I had told the story of a young woman (a girl in many ways) who at one point had only been given a few months to live and now was healed and I felt like I was talking about someone else.
A few years ago some of you remember that I went back to teaching (a dream fulfilled) after nearly a decade away. One day a fellow teacher walked in and sat down and with no pretense said to me, "so tell me your story". I was confused and asked what she was talking about and she proceeded to tell me that the principal and students had been saying "how incredible" my story was and she wanted to hear it. I hesitated, she insisted, and I proceeded to tell her a 10 minute version of the story (because it was obvious she was bored)... at the end she literally looked at me, stood up, and said "hmmm....I was expecting something really remarkable ... what's so inspiring about your story?" and walked out.
I remember sitting there stunned... and then realized that down deep there was a part of me that felt exactly what she said. What was so special and remarkable about my story? What was so inspiring about it? Some of my friends have hated the response she had... but to me she expressed something I encountered as I returned to "real life". Most people never were going to understand or take the time to really hear the war that had been fought for my health. Some maybe were afraid it could happen to them, some maybe just didn't care, or some (like a boss I had) told me that my experiences wouldn't contribute to the skills for the job...
I had to heal and it took me a while to work through time lost, dreams delayed, and hurt that was incredibly deep... and that took time... a lot of time.
So after I read the book in its entirety and realized also that there was a sense of replanting and growing after nearly a decade of fighting for my life and then the ensuing years of losing my precious daddy and grandmother and a hundred other big life changes along the way... and so a year of doing something new every single day was born.
A couple of guidelines that I wanted to share...
1. While I do plan to share a lot of the items throughout the year, there are a few that I have planned that are private which I know you will understand and respect. I may in the future share about them... or maybe they will stay in a secret place in my heart.
2. A first could be something that I hadn't done in the last ten years (after nearly a decade away from "real life"... let me tell you this makes sense).
3. Every single day I will be doing a first... and welcome suggestions y'all! If you have anything please feel free to send it to me!
4. Not every "first" is "life-shattering" but each one is something that I am looking forward to learning from and experiencing and sharing!
Friend, I am not sure where you are as you have approached this new year, but I hope that this year of me doing something new every day will inspire you in your own story. Here is to replanting, building, and rejoicing...
L'Chaim friends...here is to life.
"The people who survived the wars have found favor in the desert. The LORD appeared to me in a faraway place and said, “I love you with an everlasting love. So I will continue to show you my kindness. Once again I will build you up, and you will be rebuilt, my dear people Israel. Once again you will take your tambourines, and you will go dancing with happy people. Once again you will plant..."
//Jeremiah 31:2-5//
happy new year friends! I know that for many (like myself) 2024 seemed like a unique year that was extremely brutal and difficult in some ways with some very dark valleys and in other ways held miracles in abundance that have left me speechless with gratitude... A few dear things have been shared in this space, but the personal and private moments behind the scenes abound with tender treasures learned only in this unique year and in many ways I purposefully took time away from consistent social media, withdrew in a lot of ways and spent these last months marveling in my deep need for God's grace to meet me every single day and every moment.
I read a quote last year and it said, "Please never forget how brave it is to continue to show up in a story that looks so different than what you thought it'd be".
Maybe you limped towards the new year with deeply personal prayer requests and longings still awaiting the provisions that only the Lord can answer and provide. Maybe you are in a season of joyful answered prayers and maybe you are in the time between. Both seasons are worth celebrating, holding onto expectant hope in, and thanking the Lord for and both, I am convinced in different ways, are tender.
A few verses that are treasures to me as we start this new year... I hope they encourage you in whatever tender season you are in...
By awesome deeds you answer us with righteousness, O God of our salvation, the hope of all the ends of the earth and the farthest seasons, the one who by his strength established the mountains... who stills the roaring seas, the roaring of their waves, the tumult of the peoples, so that those who dwell at the ends of the earth are in awe of your signs. You make the going out of the morning and evening to shout for joy....you crown the year with your goodness and your paths drip with Abundance // Psalm 65
He grants peace to your borders and satisfies you with the finest of wheat // Psalm 147
The lowly will possess the land and live in abundant prosperity // Psalm 37
I am excited to share with y'all some very exciting things in the upcoming year, but as I look back on a most tender year, I am most grateful for the promise that mercy meets us each and every morning, not just when the calendar date changes on a new year. Mercy and hope and grace to embark into new seasons and new years with expectant hope.
One of the most beautiful gifts is the beautiful friendships and community here that God has placed in my life. Thank you for your love, for your support, and most of all, thank you for faithfully and consistently praying for myself and my cherished ones - so many of you consistently reach out and ask privately for how you can pray for me and I am always humbled. I look forward to growing in grace with you this upcoming year.
Happy New Years friends.
May our God bless you abundantly as we embark on a new season and say hello to 2025.
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