The Best of the Blog: 2014 in Review

It’s that time of year, friends: time for reflecting on the year past and the year ahead. Do you love it as much as I do? (I get very angsty if I don’t have time to reflect right around the yearly calendar flip. It’s just a thing.)

A year ago I was writing about how we were about to become homeless. This year I’m about to share with you how we’re not homeless anymore… but we’ve moved into a new (old) tiny, very unconventional home on wheels. (Come back later this week for more about that.) That will open up a whole new subject I plan on writing about through the course of this year, which I think will be fun. Really fun.

One of the other things I’m going to do this year is post reader letters/questions and answer them publically on the blog. I’ll do this anonymously or with first names, according to the wishes of the sender. Already I have a few in the queue that I’ll be posting, but if you have a question or subject you’d like me to tackle, please send your email to me at adrielbooker (at) gmail (dot) com and put in the subject line: Ask Adriel (add a key word or phrase from your question here). I’m not sure how often I’ll be able to answer and post them, but we’ll try it and see how we go.

Popular posts

For those of you interested, or those who’d like to catch up, here are the most popular posts I’ve written here in 2014:

1. Bring Back Our Girls: 4 ways you can help #bringbackourgirls right now*
2. Among the Fields of Gold: Losing my baby to miscarriage in Italy
3. The Priceless Little Photograph (And using what you’re good at as an offering)
4. Let’s Do Away With the “Clueless Dad” Stereotype 
5. Why Passenger Goody Bags When Flying With Babies and Small Kids is a Bad Idea
6. The Only 4 Tips You Need for Flying with Babies and Small Kids
7. Under the Olive Tree: A letter to our baby lost to miscarriage
8. Love a Mama in Nepal this Mother’s Day

*I just want to say a special thank you here to those that helped get Boko Haram’s grotesque page removed from facebook. At first it seemed to be a losing battle with facebook (that had me SO disheartened and outraged all at once), but so many of you rallied and our collective voice seemed to push them to rethink their decision (which was originally a “no”) and get that garbage removed. Well done friends! I’m so proud of our community’s little part in serving those precious girls. (I’m still praying for them. Are you??)

More favorites

These are some additional posts from the year that didn’t receive as much traffic as the above, but meant a lot to me personally:

1. Love Sees: Exposing the Myth that “Love is Color Blind” 
2. The Work of Rest: Cultivating Selah in a Wrestles Heart and a Busy World
3. Selah: Pause and Listen
4. He Came Because of #Ferguson
5. Come Jesus, Come. 
6. Dear Church, can we make room in our hearts for it all? 
7. Royalty and Righteousness Born Into Our Mess
8. I also hosted a series on the Motherheart of God, which gathered some phenomenal women writing about an often under-recognized side of God. You can read the first post in the series here: The Motherheart of God: God As A She?

As I spent time looking back through my year’s worth of posts, I realized that—with the exception of a small handful—most of the posts I wrote this year were quite serious or heavy in nature. I suppose that’s a reflection on just how full-on this year felt as we watched tragedy after tragedy unfold before us in the media. (Maybe that’s why I subconsciously ended the year with a light-hearted post about my kids becoming believers in Santa?)

Old favorites

There are a few older posts that continue to be popular here on the blog, year after year. These ones just seem to pick up more momentum the longer they’re around:

1. 100 little things about pregnancy, birth, and being a first time mom
2. Kids cowboy birthday party
3. Celebrating Advent with the Jesus Storybook Bible
4. 150+ Ways to celebrate Advent and the countdown to Christmas
5. How to transform a crib into a toddler loft bed
6. Dealing with gender disappointment in pregnancy
7. Hello Judah: a successful VBAC birth story
8. A gentle caesarean – ever heard of it?
9. 10 Tips and tricks for breastfeeding in public
10. The day I lost my baby (My first miscarriage story)
11. 35+ Resources and encouragement for new and expecting moms
12. Judah’s first birthday circus party and Levi’s rockstar birthday party (on a budget)
13. How to prepare for a successful VBAC

A heartfelt thanks

It would be remiss of me not to take the time to write a thank you in a year-in-review post like this. Because really, this blog would just be a giant, meaningless consumer of my time if it weren’t for you – your readership, insight, camaraderie, wisdom, and collective heart and voice. I’ve made some of my closest friends through connecting in this space and so grateful for the opportunities that have opened up in my world through writing here. I appreciate you very much and am thankful for how much I’ve learned about the world and myself because of our time here on the blog together. Thank you for continuing to come back, even when my posts come in fits and spurts. And even when—like this year—I seem to write about more hard stuff than “entertaining” stuff.

I’ll just leave it at this: You’re kinda amazing.

Here’s to a great year ahead – more learning, more growing, more living life well.

Love,
Adriel

P.S. I look forward to reading your “Ask Adriel” emails, but please give me grace if I don’t respond straight away. (Because: LIFE.) And, if you’re interested in last year’s “best of” blog round-up, you can find that here.