My instinctive reflection on 2025 was, “I am so glad that’s over.” My year was defined by my sixth pregnancy and the birth of my sixth baby, a delightful and unmitigated good. But, in my third trimester, when friends asked me how I was holding up, the answer was usually a tongue-in-cheek, “I have reached the end of my strength.” The delivery was a rough one—okay, it was straight up terrible—but we all made it through. I was standing in the kitchen recently thinking about this in reference to the whole year. We all made it through. How? I unpinned the calendar from the wall next to the coffee machine and paged through it, starting with January.

Where did we find the strength?

I’m calling the answer my reverse resolution. I don’t have any affirmative statements about what I’ll do next year, just blank amazement that I was carried through this one.

January

I found out I was pregnant with our sixth baby. I took a test after we came home from a date at a sushi restaurant. I stood in the bathroom, nervous, not just because this baby would be our sixth baby in just under nine years. Not just because September is not the most ideal time for an educator’s family to go through a major transition. You’ll have to take my word for it: there were other factors in play. And then, I stared at the two lines, thinking, “Well if that don’t beat all.” I came out of the bathroom and made that announcement to my audience of one. The baby was immediately nicknamed “Mochi.”

February

Jonny was gone for four days, so everyone at home cycled through a stomach bug, because that’s how that works. And during the quarantined downtime, my children discovered the story of Titanic. What started with a Magic Treehouse book would evolve into a dozen audiobook listens, a wooden model of the ship built in the garage, a video we watched over and over, and a shared copy of Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember. We kept telling the story, in endless variations, all year long.

March

A friend threw me a “You’re having your sixth baby!” party on the Feast of the Annunciation. I had told her a few weeks before that I was pregnant and feeling very overwhelmed, and she countered with, “That is amazing news. I’m throwing you a party.” Granted, both of us are about 99% extrovert. That tactic wouldn’t work with everyone, but it did wonders for me.

April

I finished the First Friday devotion, after dragging some reluctant toddlers to mass for nine First Fridays in a row. At one point, I looked up the promises associated with the First Friday devotion, and the first one was, “I will give them all the graces necessary for their state of life,” which was exactly what was happening to me. At Easter, two friends who asked me to be their sponsor came into the Catholic Church. They joined with their whole families, which was beautiful to see.

May

The month started with a dear friend offering to sell us her twelve-passenger van before she moved across the country. This guaranteed that we’d have enough seats for everyone come the September. At the end of the month, I was the confirmation sponsor for another friend’s son.

June

We made our once-a-year-if-we’re-lucky car camping trip to the Great Sand Dunes, my favorite place on earth. Because we went with family, Jonny and I took some walks on the dunes at nighttime. The next weekend, our daughter received confirmation and her first communion.

July

We attended a wedding, received those associated sacramental graces, and had a blast, to boot.

August

I sent Jonny and three children off to the same school campus. This is a bit of Hinds Family lore, but my oldest has attended three schools in as many years. Finally, this year, everyone was at the same campus, and they all have excellent teachers.

September

The sixth baby was born via a scheduled c-section with some unscheduled post-op complications. Friends—both in-person and online—surrounded us with gifts, prayers, and goodwill. Gratitude marked the first weeks of her life. She was exactly right on time; she gave so much tangible joy to her siblings. I was expecting this for my seven-year-old daughter, but I was not expecting it for my nine-year-old son. It was a difficult year for him, too, and probably the best thing I could have done for him was give him a baby sister. Not that I would have ever known or planned that.

October

I turned 33 on my birthday. We celebrated the pile of baptism days we have in October with our usual “sparkling cider and renewal of baptismal vows,” five-minute-liturgy. Part of this is Jonny sprinkling (read: dousing) every family member with holy water.

November

My kids met their “Uncle Pete,” my cousin, and we took the oldest three to watch him play Scar in the North American tour of Broadway’s The Lion King. We also hosted Thanksgiving—which is to say, my sister-in-law offered to bring everything to our house and we said yes—and the following Sunday, we baptized our new baby.

December

Every early December, at least some of Jonny’s family members visit his dad’s grave. It’s a military cemetery, so it is gorgeous, and it is December, so it is always freezing. The children use that graveyard like a playground anyway. This year, the fourteenth year that grave has been there, it was warm enough for the cousins to run barefoot, for my daughter to perch on her Grandpa’s headstone like a parrot. You don’t have to call this a miracle, but you should know that it snowed six inches the very next day.

Am I glad that 2025 is over? Yes. But I’m also glad that it happened. When I could not go on alone, family and friends accompanied me. Sacramental graces and good stories abounded. My year started with a beautiful new life and ended in December sunshine. If this is what the end of my strength is like, I almost wish I had gotten here sooner.

buy the best mommy of 2025 coffee 😅

On the Calendar: CHRISTMAS and MORE CHRISTMAS

🎄you’re exactly where you’re meant to be, and you’re already doing more than you think. 🎄

This Sunday’s Gospel is Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23🪽. Here’s a snippet:

When the magi had departed, behold,
the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said,
“Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt,
and stay there until I tell you.
Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.”
Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night
and departed for Egypt.
He stayed there until the death of Herod,
that what the Lord had said through the prophet might be fulfilled,
Out of Egypt I called my son.

Christmas cheer hand-in-hand with Christmas chaos is something I’ve been hearing about (and enduring myself), and it’s kind of comforting to see that the Holy Family experienced that in spades. I very much hope none of us are facing as dire of a situation. But their story, Nazareth to Nativity to Egypt and back again, had its fair share of “Well, that came out of nowhere;” both good (shepherds and kings) and bad (no room at the inn, also leave NOW). This means that they—the J+M+J trio—are excellent intercessors for the rest of us in our end-of-holiday state, whatever it may be.

According to last week’s poll—if we can assume the 20 respondents are an accurate representation of the whole (my Psych Stats professor just sneezed somewhere)— about 15% of readers attended a midnight mass for Christmas, and the rest did not. No one was on the fence about it.

Now…

My books: Eucharistic Saints, A Saint A Day

Not affiliate links or Amazon links. By all means, buy the books on Amazon, I just figure you know how to get there on your own.

+ Saint Sessions for YDisciple