I don’t have a top 25 in 2025. Instead, it was a year of firsts. Everyday until October 26, 2025 was a first.
The most difficult first was Father’s Day.
My birthday was hard. The card was signed “Mama,” not “Daddy and Mama.”
Daddy’s birthday was made a little better by a friend who took me out to a birthday lunch and brought me beautiful white hydrangeas.
And then came October 26. A whole year. 365 days. Everyday I make myself remember what his voice sounds like because I don’t want to forget. Everyday I remember his laugh - he loved to laugh - because it makes me smile. And everyday I wish it didn’t have to be the way it was, ended the way it did. And not even for me, for us, necessarily, but for him.
2025 was a milestone year for all the Bayhams, and that’s what I hoped to focus on. We celebrated, but we didn’t celebrate like I wish we would’ve or like I hoped we would.
Seth and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. I wanted a trip across the pond. But I didn’t make it happen. I don’t know why. It was too overwhelming, I guess, just like most things in 2025. Seth did renew his passport so I suppose that was at least a step in the right direction.
Mason celebrated his 20th birthday. No longer a teenager. He took summer classes so he stayed in Ruston during the summer.
Hannah Kate started her senior year and celebrated her 18th birthday. I supposed that means she’s an adult now. How I can have two adult children I’m not sure.
Ellie celebrated her 13th birthday. A teenager. But let’s be honest. Ellie has been far ahead of her years since she was about two. I honestly feel like she’s been a teenager for quite awhile now. She acts like it.
We did take two big trips and several smaller trips. Mason couldn’t go with us on either big trip so that was odd, but I always knew the day was coming. And then there was the snow. That was a core memory, for sure. I was also given the opportunity to be involved in the collegiate ministry at our church by mentoring two of the most precious college students you’ll ever meet. That has been a huge gift.
It’s not that 2025 was necessarily bad. It was sad, for sure. Grief is such a sneaky thing. It comes. It goes. Sometimes it comes and stays. It sits awhile whether you want it to or not. Much of the year I felt like it was my constant companion, sometimes wanted, other times unwanted.
But as deep as the grief was, God’s comfort was deeper. The depth of God’s compassion and comfort is something I had not experienced like this before. I feel like I know a little better what Paul was talking about in 2 Corinthians 1.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.”
~2 Corinthians 1:3-5
The God of ALL comfort. There was nowhere my grief went that God’s comfort didn’t go farther. Did it still hurt? Yes. Was I still sad? Yes. But I was never without joy, never without peace, never without hope. I’m not sure that I’ve reconciled how grief and joy coexist, but they do. I don’t think it’s that grief enters into my joy but that joy enters into my grief. I’m sure many books written by many really smart people who can articulate much better than I can have been written about this, and I’m not one of those. I just know that it has been quite a time.
I can remember several situations in the lives of my children that caused them great anguish and hardship. As much as they were hurting, I feel certain I was hurting more. I just wanted to fix it. Or, at the very least, take it from them. Let me have that one. Certainly that is not real life, nor is it helpful in their walk with the Lord and growth in spiritual maturity. It’s in the furnace of affliction and heartache that the Lord often does some of His deepest work in our hearts. I thought about that so much in 2025. As deeply as I feel and hurt when my children do, I am convinced that my heavenly Father feels and hurts even more deeply when His children do. In other words, He was feeling and hurting right alongside me. I am also convinced that He is moved with compassion and kindness on our behalf. I am convinced that He draws near. I think I now know what Zephaniah 3:17 looks like, how God meets me in the everyday.
“The Lord your God in your midst, The Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.”
~Zephaniah 3:17
Every time the sadness comes, so, too, does this verse. As deeply as I feel for my children, my heavenly Father feels even more deeply for me. I’ve known the Lord to be so many things throughout my 47 years. I’ve experienced Him in so many ways. But it wasn’t until this year of firsts that I truly experienced the depth of His tender love, care, compassion and comfort. Sometimes it’s hard to lay aside the thoughts and feelings of unworthiness, but that’s one of the things grief has done for me. It’s enabled me to see me as He does and to just sit comfortably in His presence, knowing that that’s all He wants. I don’t have to do anything, earn anything, feel a certain thing, think a certain way. I don’t even have to say anything at all. Just sit with Him as I am, sadness, grief and all, and welcome the waves of His comfort, compassion, lovingkindness and goodness. Over me. For me.
All of that to say . . . gosh, I wish things were different. I really, really do. But they aren’t. And that’s okay.
2025 was hard.
But God is good.
And He does good.
Even in 2025.
And even on October 26, 2024.