We are heading into 2026, and I find myself still processing a hard year. The hard year I am processing isn’t 2025 though, it was 2022. I have just now found myself at a far enough distance to begin to understand and come to grips with the trials and blessings of that year.

2022 started with death in my family. I lost two uncles in the span of 24 hours. My dad’s brother, Clinton, was killed in a car accident on January 1st, and my mom’s brother, Jimmy, died suddenly of an illness on January 2nd. Both losses presented unique forms of grief. Losing Clinton was like losing my Dad again, because they were very much alike in many ways. Losing Jimmy was extremely fracturing for my Mom’s family for two reasons, Jimmy had been very involved in taking care of my elderly grandmother, and also, he had just gotten engaged over Christmas, so we went from the high of expecting a wedding to the low of planning a funeral. Jimmy was buried first, and it was so surreal to me to be at his funeral, I kept expecting to see him walk through the door, I’d never been in my mom’s small North Texas hometown and not seen his smiling face.

On the heels of that experience I attended my Dad’s brother’s funeral, which ended up being much more traumatizing. Clinton was a successful and prominent man, so the family hosted a larger public service, but I opted to attend the smaller family graveside service. Clinton’s wife, Dorothy, had died in November 2000, and he had kept her urn with him in his home for the past 22 years, and he was being interred along with her ashes. If you’ve never been to one, an interment is different than a burial. Sometimes people are interred in a columbarium – which is sort of like a stone cabinet with enclosed spaces for cremated remains, however, my uncle and his wife were interred in the ground of a cemetery. So, while there was a hole dug, it wasn’t a large, coffin-sized hole, it was maybe 18 to 20 inches square, and definitely not six feet deep, maybe three or four. We listened to the service, prayed, and all filed past the grave placing roses on the urns in the ground, and then we all sort of milled around quietly talking to one another. I had just finished speaking to my cousins and had walked back over to my brother Brian. The pastor began to address the gathering and told us where we would meet for lunch, at Clinton’s favorite restaurant which had been closed specifically to host our group. I must have been standing right next to the grave, because I didn’t even take a proper step, I just shifted my weight from my right foot to my left, and suddenly I found myself falling.

If you’ve ever taken a bad fall as an adult, you might have experienced time dilation. I’m certain I was only falling for a split second, but in that time my brain processed several things in succession: I am falling. This isn’t a trip, I am falling into a hole. The only hole around here is the grave. <Panic sets in> I am falling into the grave! My brother grabbed me instantly and I was immediately surrounded by people pulling me up out of the hole, but I was instinctively crying – tears pouring from my eyes – and alarm bells were still clanging in my head: My foot was on the urns! Did I break the urns? Do I have human ash on my foot? I have desecrated the graves of my uncle and aunt! My cousin rushed over to me and asked if I was okay, I wasn’t, I had injured my ankle very badly, but I didn’t want her worrying about me when I had just clumsily literally put my foot into her parents’ resting place. “No, I’m fine! Please don’t worry about me, I’m so so sorry! I can’t tell you how sorry I am!” it brings new meaning to the word “mortified”. I would have rather been the one being buried than what actually happened. I wanted to get in my car and drive to Canada and never be heard from again. For days I couldn’t talk about it without crying. I felt so stupid. Did I have zero situational awareness? How self-involved does a person have to be to not notice where the burial ground is at a funeral? Ultimately, after prayer and therapy, I decided I would take this as a lesson: I don’t want to take even a single step without Jesus or I’ll fall into the grave.

As I look back on this incident now, I see it as a prophetic warning of the year to come. Is it God’s fault I fell in that hole? Absolutely not. Did He use it to teach me a lesson? Absolutely yes. Walk humbly is not just a metaphor. Barely a month later, the Wednesday after Valentine’s Day, I received a call from the counsellor at my daughter’s school. The coach had noticed cut marks on her legs while she was changing in the locker room. She admitted she had been self-harming. I had known that she was not herself, but I had just chalked it up to normal teenage angst. I had no idea just how much she was struggling. I was able to get her in to see a therapist the same day, and on the way there I gently probed what prompted her to hurt herself. She expressed that she had been feeling anxiety, and when I asked what kinds of things make her anxious she answered, “Well, you.” I processed that silently and said, “Okay, what kinds of things do I do that make you feel anxious?” and she replied, “Just, you.”

The previous Fall we had commissioned a company to come redo our bedroom closet, and now that it was February, the contractors were scheduled to come in and begin work. This meant everything from the closet needed to be moved to the guest room closet upstairs. However, my husband was buried under a pile of work (we are a single-income household), and I had the ankle injury from my uncle’s funeral. It was Sunday though, and the contractors were coming the next day, so we had run out of time to get it done. Eric asked me to do it, and initially I said I would, but as I began the task I realized how much needed to be done, and seriously doubted my ability to get it done with my injury. I went into his office as he was under a ton of stress, and complained that I needed his help. Right then he looked up at me and yelled “Just get it done!”

Now, before you go thinking I am in an abusive relationship, you need to understand that that is one of maybe five times in the past 20 years that man has raised his voice to me. He doesn’t do that. He doesn’t yell. I’m the yeller. I’m the loose-cannon, not him. So being yelled at by someone who is usually so steady, was extremely jarring. In that moment I felt my world crashing down around me. I was a terrible mother who caused anxiety in her children, a professional failure who couldn’t keep a job, and now I had failed as a wife as well. I felt like I had to get out of there. I got in the car and drove off. That was a bad choice, but I wasn’t in a good place. As I drove off I thought No one needs me here – I’m just messing everything up. I began to think maybe I should just drive my car into a telephone pole and let the world move on without me in it. The thought was numbly appealing. I knew I should have been afraid of a thought like that, so I began to pray.

I wish I could say that I audibly heard the voice of Jesus reassuring me of his love, but I didn’t. There were no angelic appearances, no feelings of peace that settled over me. However, I did receive the presence of mind to recognize that taking myself out would actually hurt my family worse, and I somehow found the strength to go home. I completed the closet clean out through the pain. The entire time I experienced a running litany of accusations in my head like an unholy mantra – You are a useless, worthless, piece of sh*t. That exact phrase ran through my head all day long, like a terrible song stuck in my head. Eric and I usually work out our differences fairly quickly, but that one carried on for several days. I walked around in a fog for the whole next week, unsure of my place in the world or in my family.

The previous Fall I had agreed to take on the role of MOPS Coordinator for my church starting the next school year, so on Friday I headed to a MOPS leadership meeting. I walked in and tried to avoid people as everyone was getting coffee and chit-chatting, fearful they would see through my thin facade and I would burst into tears. We sat down to begin the meeting and the outgoing coordinator, my friend Elizabeth, asked for people to share their prayer requests and struggles. The room sat silent for what seemed like an eternity. I didn’t want to share, but I also didn’t want to continue to pretend to be okay. So after a shaky breath, I told my friends what I had been experiencing. The reaction was swift and strong. Melissa, our women’s pastor, stood up and asked for everyone to come lay hands on me and pray for me, and I did cry. I sobbed while my friends prayed over me for probably 15 minutes straight. It still brings tears to my eyes to think about. Melissa said, “Liz has agreed to be the MOPS coordinator for next year, so of course the enemy is attacking her and her family.”

I hadn’t considered that.

I just thought I was a loser.

The enemy had been attacking me on all fronts, and I was letting him win. I had been agreeing with his lies that I was unloved and worthless.

I began therapy, and I continued bringing my daughter to her own therapist as well, and in March, she was able to see a psychiatrist who diagnosed her with anxiety and depression, and prescribed medication.

In April, my son was diagnosed with asthma, and spent a week in the pediatric intensive care unit. You can read that story here. While he was in the hospital, God showed me just how loved I am. He sent friends and family, church members and MOPS leaders to bring gifts to Trevor at the hospital, to bring meals to my family at home, and one of our neighbors even mowed our lawn while we were in the hospital. My daughter had just started her medication, and by the end of the hospital week, she had become a different person. She spoke to me. She looked me in the eye. She didn’t respond to everything I said as if it was an accusation. I didn’t realize until that point that I had been walking on eggshells around her for so long that it had become our new normal. I remembered what she had been like before, and I realized I had been missing her. Living with someone who has untreated anxiety and depression is a bit like living with a human grenade.

My son recovered and we began his asthma journey which includes regular visits to a Pulminologist, allergy shots and daily asthma control medication. My daughter and I both continued therapy, which had the added benefit of improving communication in my marriage. I continued working in MOPS leadership. Slowly, my family and I all emerged from the dark together.

At the end of 2022 my church planned a trip to Israel, and my husband and I decided to go. In Israel, we were both baptized in the Jordan river on November 28th.

This morning I was reading First Peter, and decided to listen to the Bible Project’s explanation video. During the video, host Tim Mackey is explaining Peter’s assertion that “Baptism points to the vindication of Jesus’s followers. So like Noah, they’ve been saved through the waters, not as a magic ritual, but as a sacred symbol that shows their change of heart, their desire to be joined to Jesus in his death and his resurrection.”

That reminded me of my baptism in the Jordan River, and right then the Holy Spirit showed me – the year that began with death, ended with resurrection.

I wasn’t alone for a single moment of that dark year. Not in the hospital, not at the therapist’s office, not while cleaning the closet in pain, not in the car, not when I fell into the grave. He never abandoned me. Furthermore, He worked all of those circumstances for my good. Even after the baptism, I wasn’t miraculously transformed into a perfect person. Eric and I got into a terrible fight while still in Israel, which reminded us that we had triaged our kids’ wellbeing over our marriage and now that they were safe, it was time to focus on each other. So, in May of 2023, we began attending ReEngage at our church. ReEngaged helped us focus on working on our own selves instead of pointing fingers at one another in marriage. It also gave me incredible insight into myself and my own motivations when we delved into wounds from our families of origin.

I am still working on self-examination, listening for the voice and guidance of the Holy Spirit, and through it all I remind myself as often as I can that I don’t want to take a single step without Jesus or I’ll fall into the grave, but if I do slip and fall, I know that he will still be right there with me.