Thrived? I Only Survived, and That’s Okay!

At the onset of last year, especially among Christian communities, I heard the slogan: Thrive in 2025! And what a motivational concept. Who wouldn’t want to thrive? Last January I was excited. I was ready. Ready to thrive in 2025. To not just witness but experience a year that was new and fresh and prosperous. The notion became a regular refrain among the prophetic voices well into the months. So as I now look back at a year that has come and gone, I ask myself, “Did I thrive?” Well, that depends on perspective.
 
Increasingly, I’ve grown to understand that we must be careful with prophetic words or reinforcements when it comes to our current season of life. Because we all know that life is full of ups and downs, highs and lows, challenges and celebrations. In which of these currently are you? If it’s not your season to “thrive” in accordance with how I’d often heard others proclaim what thriving is supposed to mean (another inner checkpoint) or even meant for at this present time (check the calendar corresponding to Providence), it can set you up for heartache and disappointment.

 

People need people, it’s how we’re designed. We can and should receive hopeful encouragement or affirmation from others, but always we need to ask God himself what he has to say about the season we’re in and what he wants us to do about it, staying prayerfully vigilant. Some spiritual word boosts are meant for now, while some are intended to keep us for a future time; some aren’t meant for us at all but for another person who’s in a different season. Prophetic words carry no weight unless God spoke to you first about it. They’re more about confirmation, affirmation, or edification of what you already know.

 

So then, I saw a lot of people who did thrive last year. I just wasn’t one of them. In fact, 2025 has been one of the most challenging years I can remember. In summary, a year when nothing has gone right. I even thought at one point that I’m the devil’s laughingstock. But that’s the devil’s voice that I fight with, and he does not have my number. A few individuals who know me best had even said, “You’re starting
to remind me of Job.” While my circumstances present differently than Job’s, The Book of Job explores the relationship between humanity and God during intense suffering. Job was a righteous man who, while he reflected on his despair, he consistently remained faithful to Elohim.

 

Consistently remained faithful…

 

Hum. If I can be blunt, which I can and I will, by the time these last holidays rolled around, I was feeling pretty dead inside, just extremely worn out and burned out. Then I spent time beside a semi-hypochondriacal family member who’s chronically in and out of the hospital and who was in the ER during Christmas Eve/Christmas. Terrible timing. It was easy to want to have a pity party right then, feel miserable and to think, this really sucks. To have to be there at that time, already exhausted and having nothing left to give.

 

At first, the hospital corridor was like an alarming cacophony of “Jingle Bells” in pukes, coughs, and cries. The place was shockingly packed. Yet because, like Job, I’m a reflective person, it was later I realized that’s when I started to feel again, when I considered those who were truly suffering around me. People who were in much worse shape and who needed the ER for what it was intended, room for a real emergency. When I forced my eyes off myself or my situation and onto those others around me, I started to have empathy again.

 

The hospital staff who remained friendly and perky while they spent their “merry and bright” holiday taking care of the sick and injured was eye-opening. I was thankful for them. What a calling that is to care for patients who’re in bad shape, and honestly, who exhibited some coarse and antipathic behavior toward the ones who were only there to help them. When some folks suffer, they can get nasty and mean. It was a display of humanity at its worst, and as a witness, it made me consider all the things, and amazing people, to be grateful for. It also gave me the distraction to pray for the ones who were much more challenged than I. Things can always be worse. There is always something to be thankful for. There is still goodness out there. But it requires getting your eyes off yourself to widen your circle of perspective a little more. And a little more. And a little more. Sometimes that can be the greatest challenge of all.

 

Because I also operate in the prophetic, people have asked me about what word or theme God might’ve given me as we approached 2026. And I still don’t have one. I’m sorry, but God hasn’t given me one and it somehow seems intentional. Yet I feel to say, because someone else probably needs to hear this… I’ve learned that acceptance is growth. I have accepted the way things have turned out this past year, and not in bitter regard.

 

Acceptance without bitter regard…

 

That’s a word for somebody.

 

In that sense, you could say I thrived. My faith hasn’t shriveled. Therefore, I thrived.

 

And there are other things, such as I’m grateful I still have a roof over my head—a roof I happen to really like. Yet even that could be gone tomorrow. It’s not a doomsday or a panic-driven outlook but the reality that what’s here today could be gone tomorrow. No worldly guarantees. So I strive to be more spiritually in-tune to the present. Take one day at a time—grateful for one day at a time, even one moment at a time and relish extra much the good ones. So many across the globe have lost homes due to ramped-up mother nature, many have suffered illnesses and some without proper medical insurance, inflation is astronomical, and lives have passed on or changed forever.

 

So, depend on God more. That’s perhaps reason, but it’s a good one. Where are you in that? Do you depend on God at all? How about it? Some may say, “What God? You mean the one who caused all this suffering in the world?” Yes. Except, he didn’t cause the suffering, but he allows it. For a time. He gave mankind free choice, and man chose to rebel and that brought on our own destruction. Yet, God continues in pursuit of us; he reaches out and reaches out, and reminds us in so many relatable ways, and taps our shoulders, or hits us with a 2X4, and works to get our attention where it needs to be. On HIM. Because he loves us. Sometimes it’s the only love we might experience in the world. And he says: “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” That’s become my mantra. That’s out of Jeremiah 29:11. And that’s a good place to start believing about any point in time. Happy New Year.