Happy New Year friends! I’ve fallen into the habit of taking December off from blogging. Just posting our Christmas letter and leaving it there and giving all of us a rest on long winter nights filled with too much sugar and little boys begging to open the presents tucked under the tree. I love Christmas, but am always happy to take down the decorations and take inventory of the year in my review mirror. 2014 was filled with work and wonder and wild little boys.

We settled into farming in earnest this past year, the boys are wild as ever, and it’s a wonder I finished a 65,000 word manuscript I started this summer. My first attempt at book-length nonfiction. I’ve titled this story, our family’s story: Farming Grace, and appreciate your prayers as I move forward with this in 2015. I don’t know what God will do with this book, but for the first time in my life as a writer, I can honestly say, I let myself go and bared my soul.

Halfway into writing this memoir, which involved a lot of years doing it my way and doing it badly, I wanted to build a bonfire and burn what I’d written, but I pressed on through trials and tears and telling the truth, and now I feel free.

Scared, but free.

Jesus said, The truth will set you free, John 8:32.

My path to freedom began with my breakdown in 2013. There’s something rock solid about hitting rock bottom. Cocooned in my breakdown crisis, I sprouted wings. Little, wet wings I began trying out this year writing my story. For those of you who follow my blog, you’ll recognize some posts turned into chapters if this book is ever published. God has such a sense of humor, because when I began blogging, I only did so at the insistence of my literary agent. I did not want to blog. I wanted to write novels. So I began my blog five years ago as a God thing. Once a week I’d sit down and write “something for God” things the Lord was teaching me usually through difficult, painful lessons because I’m such a hard head.

Pretty soon, I found myself looking forward to blogging. Sometimes right in the middle of creating a post, God would break through and reveal a truth to me. I began to anticipate these “God moments” while blogging. One day I realized I enjoyed blogging more than working on my novels.

After my breakdown, I didn’t know how I could keep blogging because I felt so raw and weary and wounded, but God insisted I do so. It felt like slitting my wrists and bleeding on paper for awhile, but when it came to finishing my book in December (I didn’t blog in December but wrote like crazy to complete my manuscript), these blogs just days and weeks after my breakdown were vital in helping me weave my story’s ending.

Never underestimate the pain you are going through. God doesn’t waste a bit of your pain. He works everything together for the good of those who love him. Romans 8:28.

Right after my breakdown, several people gave me this Romans verse. Honestly, I wanted to give it right back to them with a “thanks but no thanks!” I couldn’t imagine God working good out of my breakdown. But God really has worked all things for good in my life. I wouldn’t go back to my pre-breakdown self for anything.        

I never could have written Farming Grace without my breakdown. I might never have written a nonfiction book at all. I like hiding in fiction. Working out my angst writing about make-believe people. When you write about real people all bets are off. For Christmas, I gave my mom and daughter Cami my manuscript. I was particularly worried about my mom, how she would respond to this book. She and my dad are big in my story. Just as they’ve always been big in my life. And I’ve been reading the book out loud to Scott. We’ve agreed to spill our secrets with the hope that others will find freedom in Jesus the way we have. This book has been a healing journey for me. My hope is that others will find healing in Jesus, too. I’m so grateful my mom approves of the book and has given me her blessing to share it with others.

I am not a pretty Christian, which I reveal in Farming Grace, but I have a beautiful Savior.

For a number of years now, I’ve chosen a word for the new year to guide me. I pray about this word for a week or two before settling on it New Year’s Day. Last year, my word was “Write” If you had told me at this time last year I would write a nonfiction memoir, I would have laughed at you. Especially laughed if you’d said, “You will start your book at the height of harvest and finish it before Christmas.” “NO way!” I would have responded. “Absolutely not possible.”

With God all things are possible, Matthew 19:26.

This year, the word that has come to me again and again in the past few days is “Rejoice!” There is a season for everything under heaven. A time to weep and a time to laugh, Ecclesiastes 3:4. I’ve spent the past few years doing a lot of weeping. Making peace with my brokenness has not come easy. Writing a book about it has helped.

I just want to thank all of you for being my faithful tribe, my first readers, the ones there for me through thick and thin. Some of you have told me, “You should make a book out of your blogs.” I really appreciate your outrageous encouragement. I was thinking of you as I worked on Farming Grace these past six months. I figured if nothing else, I had about a dozen readers willing to pick up my attempt at a memoir created out of Barefoot.

And I really would love to hear your word for the year left in the comments. If you tell me your word, I will pray this word over you. God is so faithful and he wants to be our friend. Wants to help us on our journey. Wants to hold our lives in his everlasting arms.

Romans 12:15 says, Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. I hope I can rejoice with you in 2015, but I also promise to weep with you if you weep. The Bible says, You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book. Psalm 56:8. 

Can you imagine your bottle of tears in the hand of God? Him turning your tears into a story? To bestow on you a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. You will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor. Isaiah 61:3.

God himself is writing a book about your tears. Your struggle is not wasted. Your cocoon of pain creates your wings. We all have a story. Your story matters to God. And it matters to others. Make 2015 a chapter in your life full of love and sacrifice and your struggle to finally fly free.