The Music of 2025

 As one year draws to a close, many ways to reflect upon it and encapsulate it suggest themselves.  Year-end reports from sites as diverse as YouTube, Life360, and Duolingo pop up and present the stats that demonstrate the actions one took in that particular set of 365 days.  Some families - ours included in past years, but not recently - write a Christmas letter, summarizing the stage of life of each member of the family.  I hope to be organized enough to do so in the future, but it surely didn't happen in 2025!  

Of all the ways to wrap up last year, the way I most desire to do so is through music.

Every year, I begin a new playlist on YouTube for music that rates as a favorite for me.  In 2025, I added four dozen songs to my 2025 Favorites playlist; and I won't list them all here, but I will mention my top two favorites - which happen to be favorites by a long shot!  You see, the two defining moments of last year were the death of my mother on April 16 and the death of my father on September 6, and these songs correlate to those events.

As an aside, I'll mention that, more than ever before, I'm so very thankful that I don't know the future. If I had known on January 1, 2025, that I would lose both my parents within five months of each other, the dread would have overshadowed and diminished the many joys God gave me this year.  I am quite content to not know what's coming down the road!

Shortly before my mother's life here on earth drew to an end, I heard the song "How Shall I Sing?" by Keith and Kristyn Getty; and it became a powerful anthem for me as it redirected my grief from an earthly perspective to the hope and delight found in a heavenly one.  I listened to it over and over and over again.  If I could carry only one song from 2025 with me, it would be this one.

Gratefully, I'm not limited to such a singular choice, and the other song which stands out in my memory from this year is one which became precious to me around the time of my dad's passing: "Oh Death" by MercyMe.  In style very different from "How Shall I Sing?", it still transforms my thinking about this huge event which my parents underwent this year and which shall be the end of all of us, unless Jesus comes back while we're still alive.  I love the confidence and victory expressed in both the words and the music of this one, confidence to the point of taunting the personification of Death that the song addresses.  

Besides those two that specifically deal with the passage from this life to the next, it just so happens that I have a few others on my 2025 Favorites playlist that have a similar theme.  Songs like...

~ "Ain't No Grave" by North County Music

~ "Life Means So Much" by Chris Rice

~ "Hymn of Heaven" by Phil Wickham

Interestingly, besides the theme of death appearing in this playlist, a close runner-up was joy! And thanksgiving! Songs like...

~ "Can't Steal My Joy" by Josiah Queen

~ "Smile" by Sidewalk Prophets

~ "Thanks and Praise" by Songs from the Soil

~ "Thanksgiving" by Gas Street Music

And this one that beautifully combines the themes of grief and joy: "Reap That Joy" by Rend Collective.

There is more that I could say about the 38 other songs I added to that Favorites playlist this past year, but I'll simply conclude by saying that, in the same way that I'll never forget the two deaths that defined 2025 for me, I'll remember the soft blanket of comfort and peace God wrapped around me as I listened to these songs.  Music is a powerful tool; and when my parents instilled an appreciation for it in me during the early years of my childhood, they didn't know how God would use it to minister to my soul as they slipped away from this earth.

Grandma Chronicles, Part One

 Ever since the tail end of August 2022, we have been blessed to have my mother-in-law live with us.

Yes, I said blessed.  And that's truly how we feel about it.  (It took a while for my relationship with her to get to that point, but that's a story for another day.  And another.  And another.  And another. And another. And another. And the conclusion!) 

During the past two and a half months, Grandma Fisher has remained fairly stable as far as her health and abilities go; but slowly, so slowly that it's almost imperceptible, she is declining.  No big surprise there, since she is 84 years old!

Along the way, we sometimes feel pangs of sadness as we sense her going downhill; but sometimes we laugh.  You HAVE to laugh.  You'll go crazy if you don't.  

~ Grandma in *her* spot by the woodstove; she spends hours reclining there ~

Two recent things I want to record here:

1. She is on a HUGE V8 kick.  I keep it perpetually on my grocery list, we buy jug after jug of it, and she drinks multiple glasses a day.  She'll sit at the table and call to anyone who goes by, "Could I have a V8 please?" When we place a glass of the tomatoey goodness in front of her, she will say "thank you," then reach for the salt shaker and sprinkle a generous dose on top of the juice!  We never have to worry that her sodium intake is too low, that's for sure!  This past Sunday, we had a house full of lunch guests; and in the midst of my rushing around to prepare and serve, I stopped by the table where Grandma sat and asked her what she would like from our potluck for the plate I was getting ready to prepare for her.  "I'm not hungry," she said, "but would you please refill my glass of V8?"  I complied, of course; but a few minutes later, I was told by my kids that it was Grandma's fourth or fifth glass of V8 she had consumed in the short amount of time since we had gotten home from our church service!  Apparently, anyone who paused by her to ask if they could get anything for her was given one assignment: bring me a glass of V8!! 

2. An evening or two ago, she asked me for some orange slices.  We had been given some home-grown oranges recently from a California friend, so I assumed she was asking about that and, putting aside all the other tasks I felt pressing on me, I told her "sure," then got out the cutting board and a knife and started slicing some oranges for her.  Halfway through my task, it dawned on me.  She wasn't asking for actual orange slices!  Instead, she was asking for the candy she loves called, you guessed it, "orange slices!"  "Oh!!" I exclaimed, "Now I get it!!  You want candy!"  So I gave the sliced oranges to Shav who happily ate them all up and got the bag of candy orange slices out of the pantry for her.  And she happily ate them all up.  (Not the entire bag, thankfully, but all that was left in it from her previous partaking.) 

Facebook Is Fun, But... {A Return to My Writing Roots}

 

Once upon a time, I was a blogger.

On Thursday, January 18, 2007, to be precise, I wrote my first blog post and experienced the exhilaration of pressing the "publish" button and seeing words I had written within the refuge of my home become available to others all around the world.  Not that many of those "others" ever saw my blog - I wasn't a big-time blogger by any stretch of the imagination! - but a few did, and I thoroughly enjoyed the cozy corner of community that I found through blogging.  

For four years, I kept up a fairly steady stream of posts there on that first blog, Life on Sylvan Drive; but on January 18, 2011, I posted my last one there and immediately started writing on a new blog.  That venture continued with great regularity for six years or so, then tapered off in the seventh, and nearly came to a standstill after that, with only one brief resurgence during the initial lockdown when Covid broke out in the spring of 2020.  

It's not the only reason for the decline; but certainly a large contributing factor was that I began to post much more often on Facebook, lured by the ease and speed with which I could, for example, take a picture on my phone, then quickly write a caption (or not), and post it right away, to be seen by friends and family and, from time to time, a few people unknown to me who somehow stumbled across something I shared there.  Facebook drew me in, and I savored the simplicity of connecting with others in that way, both through writing words and posting pictures that were seen by others, as well as seeing what they shared from their lives.  (Along the way, I wasted many hours on Facebook; but that's a whole different story!)

So why switch back to blogging at this point?  Am I planning to abandon Facebook?

No, not entirely at least.  I still intend to post there, though perhaps not as often as I used to - but then again, it might end up being just as often. Who knows?  The main reason, however, that I got the itch to start a blog again is because Facebook provides very little options for how to search for and find something that I previously posted.  If there's a story from my childrens' childhood that I want to send to the kids, I can't do that.  If there's a bit of parenting wisdom or experience that I want to use to encourage a friend, I can't find it and link to it on Facebook.  

But I can with a blog.

Last week, we celebrated Independence Day; and the question arose about our Fourth of July observances in years gone by (specifically, if Harrisonburg used to have a parade downtown on the Fourth - the answer is yes they did, but they no longer do that).  It took virtually no time or effort to look up blog posts from 8 or 10 or 12 years ago and send links to the rest of the family so they could uncover the answer to the question and enjoy the walk down Memory Lane as well.  

Facebook just doesn't give me that option.  And so, back to blogging it is, with a fresh start with a new blog whose name is inspired by our homestead.  God has brought us to this place, and I want to use this blog as a memorial record of His kindness and faithfulness to us as these next years - however many they may be - slip by. I believe my children will be grateful.  I believe I will be, too, when I am an old lady, sitting in my rocking chair, reading the words I scribble down today and gazing at the pictures that capture life in all its vitality right now.

"The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance." - Psalm 16:6