2017 — Year-End Reflection

As I look back on 2017, I see a mosaic of tears and tenderness, struggle and surrender. It was the year my soul cracked open — the year I stopped pretending I was fine and began the long, trembling walk toward healing.

There were days when anxiety felt like a cage around my chest and nights when sleep hid far from reach. I wrote through the ache — raw, unfiltered, searching for God in the fog. In those quiet, tear-stained hours, His mercy met me again and again.

Through depression, rejection, and the sharp sting of betrayal, the Lord was gently restoring what life had fractured. I began to write honestly — about exhaustion that sleep couldn’t cure, about the loneliness that can exist even in a crowded house, about the longing to be seen and loved without having to perform.

My journals became altars — places where I laid down fear, shame, and self-condemnation. Through every entry, God whispered: “You are not alone, beloved. I am still here.”

💗 Lessons in the Light

2017 was the year I learned that healing is not linear. It comes in waves — some tender, some fierce — washing away layers of pain until truth can breathe again.

• Faith & Spirituality became my lifeline. When I couldn’t see a way forward, faith carried me — a thread of light through the darkness.

• Love & Compassion deepened as I realised how desperately the hurting need gentleness.

• Family & Relationships were tested and refined. The ache of fractured connections taught me to forgive and to keep loving, even when love costs.

• Service & Kindness became healing in motion — helping others even as I was learning to stand again.

• Creativity re-emerged as therapy. Through mixed-media art and digital scrapbooking, I discovered beauty in broken textures, colour in sorrow’s shadows.

Each brushstroke, each word, became an act of worship — a quiet rebellion against despair.

✨ A Heart Reawakened

By December, I realised that though much had been lost, something far more precious had been found — hope. Not the naïve hope that everything would suddenly be easy, but the sacred knowing that even pain has purpose when surrendered to God’s hands.

Faith was no longer a distant concept; it became breath itself. Creativity, once buried under fear and fatigue, became a divine dialogue — my way of speaking back to the One who had never stopped listening.

2017 taught me to rise — not as I once was, but as someone softer, wiser, and anchored in grace.

🙏 Prayer of Gratitude

Lord Jesus,

Thank You for the gift of survival, for teaching me that even when my strength fails, Your grace remains. Thank You for the courage to face my brokenness and for turning pain into purpose. May every word I write and every colour I paint bring healing — first to my own heart, and then to others walking a similar road.

In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

🌸 Closing Thought

The cracks in my story are no longer symbols of shame; they are golden seams of grace. What the enemy meant for harm, God is already weaving into beauty.

Healing begins where honesty meets hope.