Looking back at 2025

For a few years now I've been using this last week of the year to write a blog post that reflects on the year past. In particular, I've been using questions to help me focus my thoughts and keep me honest. I've done the same today.

You can vaguely see Mt Fuji in the
centre of this photo. I took this photo
today near our house.
The last sunset of 2025!

1. What makes this year unforgettable?

In January our eldest son got married to a very special lady in a God-honouring and beautiful celebration. In December they had their first child, our first grandchild, and my parents' first great-grandchild. And we got to meet our granddaughter too! It's pretty hard to go past these things for making 2025 an unforgettable year.

2. What did I enjoy doing this year?

Same answer as 1? 

I also enjoyed continuing to settle into our life-as-two again. It's different to do this as older adults. After so many years of cooking for teenage boys, I've been exploring different menu items that are better for our health, rather than affordable ways to fill up hungry boys in Japan.

Continuing to settle into our new church has also been good. This year for the first time, we have been a team leading worship: David behind the mike and me at the piano. That's been very satisfying.

I also ran a five-day writing retreat in May. That was very enjoyable, but also challenging.

I enjoyed baking for church events and hosting friends at our place. These two things that I hadn't been able to do for many of the last few years and it was good to pick them up again.

We enjoyed a couple of camping trips: one on our own (for the first time ever) and the other with our camping friends.

Mid-year we spent several a month or so in Ipswich touching base with our kids, as well as friends and other family. It was new visiting our kids when they were settled in their own lives there, but we found plenty of ways to spend time with them.

3. What/who is one thing/person I'm grateful for?

Of course it's David. He's solid and reliable, loving and kind, flexible and considerate. We've been married 28 years now and I'm so grateful for the man God lead me to all those years ago. We continue to share an enjoyment of following cricket and supporting wrestling at CAJ, this year we also went to another live sporting event in Tokyo: World Athletics Championships. Playing Scrabble remains an ongoing pleasurable challenge between us (we played 2 ½ games yesterday!).

4. What did I read/watch/listen to that made the most impact this year?

Looking back at what I've read and written about this year, I don't think there was one thing that especially impacted me. It was a year of (continuing to) discover who I was apart from being a mum with kids under my roof. That journey happened via various books, songs, articles, podcasts, conversations, writing, and even reading things I've written in the past.

5. What did I worry about most and how did it turn out?

Hmmm. I felt like I worried less this year, but that's probably due to circumstance rather than me being better at handing my anxieties over to God! 

6. What is my biggest regret?

One big thing I tried was the networking trip I did to Singapore in June. In retrospect I wasn't terribly satisfied with how that went vs the amount of effort and expense that went into it, and I won't be repeating it (at least not in the form I did this year), but I'm glad I had the opportunity to try it out.

7. What's something that has changed about me?

I'm definitely more looking towards the end of my career than I have in the past. My focus has shifted a bit and retirement is much closer than it seemed in the past. Moving forward into 2026 is the topic of my New Year blog post, so I won't go there now. 

I also find myself "one of the more experienced" people in the room far more than I used, I think that has meant a change to how I view myself.

8. What surprised me most this year?

Becoming grandparents. This wasn't something I expected in 2025, but it's been a joy!

9. What Bible truths impacted me this year?

Hmmm, a hard question. This is the first year that I've actually read through the whole Bible in a single calendar year. I used an audio version and probably didn't listen as carefully as I could have at times, but I made it through and it was a good way to spend my energy! 

One theme has been allowing myself to relax into a quiet stage of life. At the women's retreat I went to in March the speaker talked about how life often resembles a white-water rafting trip. That there are times in life that you are holding on for "dear life" and other times when the water is quiet and you're moving along peacefully. She reminded us that it's okay to be in the quiet period and to be trusting God through that as much as through the rough times. I've thought about this often through the year. Rather than wondering when/what the next rough time will be, I've been trying to relax and trust God, but also to be thankful for the peacefulness we're currently experiencing in our lives.

Also, been recalling again that my value as a human is fixed. It isn't flexible according to how much I do or accomplish, how talented or successful I am. My value is fixed by God: he created me and that gives me worth.

In October I had the opportunity to give my testimony at church. I spoke on the theme of a lifetime of learning to trust God. It was much harder to do than I'd anticipated, but also a joy to have the opportunity to share a bit of my story.

10. What meta-themes have I thought about this year? (in no particular order)

This question overlaps with so much of what I've written already...

• grandparenthood
• being a parent to adult kids
• what is God calling me to do for the remainder of my time in Japan
• investing in writers
• writing a book
• looking back at 25 years in Japan
• networking
• telling God's stories
• the ongoing challenge of farewells as well as investing in new relationships
• the joy of being involved more deeply in a church again

Highlights

• meeting our granddaughter
• travel to see our kids (three times in the year, a record for us for travel to Australia)
• not moving house
• retreats: women's in March, writers in May, social media team in October, and an OMF conference in June
• helping the CAJ wrestling team
• World Athletics Championships
• seeing our closest friends in Australia

Lowlights

It's been a pretty good year really, I can't actually remember much in the way of lowlights.

Concluding thoughts

I'm going to end this year with the words I spoke in my testimony in October:

I would like to be able to say that I have learned the lesson of trusting God. He has held me and walked with me my whole life and yet still I struggle to trust him completely. What I know in my head, I am still learning to lean on in my heart. But regardless of my failure to not worry about my life, Jesus still loves me and I am so grateful for his persistence and daily grace. By God's grace I continue to "say of my Lord, 'He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust'" (Ps. 91:2).

Reflections on our 12-day trip to Australia

I did a lot of this: just sitting with
our granddaughter.

Three days ago we arrived back from our short trip to Australia to meet our new granddaughter and spend time with our kids. As you might imagine, it was a very special trip. Most of our international travel in the last 30 years has been for work, not leisure, so this uptick in family-related flights to Australia in the last few years has felt a bit extravagant. We're thankful that God has provided for our needs and that we've been able to walk a little closer to our kids through the challenging years as they transition into independent living in a country that they haven't grown up in.

The timing was perfect: we got to meet our granddaughter when she was only two weeks old, and also to have Christmas with all our kids as well. It's the first time that we've had only a "nuclear family" celebration in Australia for Christmas, i.e. not with our parents and siblings, only our kids.

Train window view: it was quite rainy
and we saw many sugar-cane fields.

It did feel like we had a double Christmas, though, a strange combo of the two types of Christmases that have become normal for us: a winter Japanese one, and a hot Australian one. Someone asked me which I preferred and I couldn't say. There are good things about both and memories associated with both.

Our journey there was a bit of a long slog. It took 25 hours door-to-door, including a two-hour car trip to the airport here, then about seven hours in the air, a taxi trip from the airport to the train station in Cairns, then a long and slow journey south to Townsville on the train that felt like it took forever (only about eight hours, twice as long as driving it would have taken). It's the first time I've taken an intercity train in Queensland. Overall the train was a good choice. It was cheaper than renting a car and, after an overnight flight, it was safer. The journey home took longer, because of train and plane schedules we had to spend the night in Cairns, so it was close to 36 hours to get back to our place in Tokyo.

Beautiful Townsville waterfront,
with Magnetic Island in the background.

Most of our 12 days in Townsville was spent hanging out with our eldest son and his wife and daughter at their place. The temperature and humidity this time of year aren't super inviting for going outside, especially with a newborn. But we did spend a little bit of time on the beachfront (though not in the sea...that's a bit dangerous with jellyfish and crocs), we went to church with them twice, and also to the Christian Christmas celebration called "The Stable" that featured not just carols and food, but live animals and actors walking around as Christmas Bible characters.

We got to housesit a beautiful water-front
apartment for free.

The apartment complex had a pool, and yes, we did have a swim one evening.

This is one reason you don't swim at this time of the year in the sea in north Queensland.

One day when we went to exit the apartment building
we found this shopping trolley taking a solo trip up and down
in the lift!

Beautiful tree in downtown Townsville. It has
a population of around 190,000, the 7th largest
non-state-capital city in Australia. Tiny compared
to Tokyo, but feels good for us who grew up in
rural Queensland.

It was a growing experience as we tried to fit in and adapt to what was going on for them, which meant not planning ahead, a lot of small grocery trips, and trying to discern how best to help out, without taking over. Like the rest of the parenting journey there's no instruction book on how to be a parent to your adult kids. But after years of raising them, I have to say that it's satisfying to sit back and watch them operating as responsible adults. Though, just like when they are younger, it's also hard to watch when they are struggling and in pain: you just want to fix it all for them and it hurts when you can't. I can easily see how challenging it would be to set boundaries if you lived close to your adult kids when they're raising their own kids. Good communication would be very important.

People have asked how it felt to be a grandmother...there's no clear answer to that either. I feel quite young at 52 to be a grandma! There is a detachment that you don't have with your own babies, when you're too tired and busy to really enjoy them. As a grandma just dropping in for a few days I had the luxury to sit back and enjoy the cuddles, while also helping out with meals, nappy changes, and a little bit of cleaning, without the long-term responsibilities and anxieties that come with parenting, especially the first time you do it. It also felt like picking up an old skill—holding a baby felt very natural and it was very special to know, as grandparents, that she's "ours".

Having our two youngest sons also visit for Christmas was like icing on the cake. The days surrounding Christmas Day when we just got to hang out together were very precious. The four guys (David and three sons) spent a lot of time playing two boardgames and I got to hang out with the girls. As I said, precious time. The last two times we came to visit this year we didn't have a solid "home base" of our own and there was a lot of other things going on, and therefore it was hard to get together and just "hang out", but that was different this time and it was lovely.

It's also been good to get home a week before school started again, we've been able to get extra sleep and relaxing time, as well as catch up with a handful of friends over meals.

Today I had the goal of starting our prayer letter, but also writing my reflection blog post looking back at 2025. I fear that I've got too many ambitions for my day!

Finishing up the year with joy

We've had some cold days and my office,
which gets no sun this time of year, is a 
chilly place. It's a bit hard to see, but in this
photo from Friday I had a blanket on my lap
and a heated mat under my feet, as
well as the electric heater behind me.

The last fortnight has been pretty hectic. First our first grandchild was born, then, before we'd had much time to process that, two days later we were neck-deep into running a wrestling meet at school, an intense, exhausting event.

And we really didn't stop from there. A usual full Sunday and then straight back into work for the next five days. Lots of good things, just not much breathing room in the middle. Thankfully we've remained healthy, school finished on Friday and then we had Saturday as a proper day off. 

This morning we had a visitor from the Australian OMF office–not something that we often have received in our years here, but it was a blessing to spend a few hours with this colleague who we'd barely met before today. 

This afternoon we're finishing off various home chores and a few editing/email matters for me too. Tomorrow afternoon we head to Australia to meet our new grandchild and fully immerse ourselves in that reality for 10 days or so. I guess I should do some packing soon too.

Wrestling meet admin fun. High-decibel, high-stress
workplace for 12 hours!

It's amazing to think we're coming up to nearly two years since our last child left home (in February). There'll be time for reflecting as I write my traditional last blog post for the year in a couple of weeks, but even now, as work starts to shut down for Christmas and New Year, I can't help but feel a little thoughtful. When talking with our visitor this morning, I said that we felt fairly content with how things were at present. He grabbed hold of that word "content" and was glad to hear it. And yes, it's true. We don't know what the future will hold, but for today, we're content in general with where things are at.

Yesterday David led the service at church. The theme was joy and David lead out with the fact that it was exactly (yesterday) 25 years since we first landed in Japan. [I also played the piano for worship, which was a real joy, because it's been a long time since I got to play Christmas music for worship in a church.] 

I realise that I'd shared about the anniversary in our prayer letter last month, but not here. Here is what I wrote in our prayer letter:

Here's the link to an article I wrote for our Australian OMF magazine about the anniversary: https://omf.org/au/one-day-at-a-time-25-years-in-japan/

We don't want your praise for this achievement, but I do want to share the story in a way that gives praise to God for sustaining us here this long. The reasons why people don't get to stay that long on the mission field are many and could easily have applied to us at several points in the last quarter of a century! We're thankful for the opportunities that we've had and the glory goes to God.

I'm not taking my computer with us tomorrow for this short time with our kids in Australia, so I may not get to write another blog post until after Christmas...though a short grandma-type post might be possible using my phone! In any case, I hope you have a blessed Christmas time with loved ones, whatever that looks like in your life.

P.S. And for those who asked: no, I will not be sharing our granddaughter's name or photo on this blog, just as I've never shared my kids names or photos in this public space.

Expectations

If you're a regular here you might remember that in May I mentioned an exciting development in our family—that we were going to become grandparents this year.(See here.)

Well the day has come: on Wednesday our first grandchild was born, a granddaughter! With our hearts partly in Australia, it's been tricky at times to concentrate on the things in front of us. In the age of instant communication, it was pretty easy to stay in touch with our son as he walked through the day with his wife as things progressed. Though I think the expectation of instant communication can easily make you impatient, and I can't say I was the most patient of expectant grandparents!

It's surreal because we can only look at photos and talk with them, but I guess that's a lot better than people in the past! I've heard stories of people getting a telegram months after such an event! But, nonetheless, we're getting a tiny taste of what my parents dealt with then they became grandparents. I've said previously that leaving Australia for Japan the first time in 2000 was one of the hardest experience I've ever had: we took my parents' only grandchild with us and saying goodbye was heartrending. Then, in Japan, we had our second child a couple of years later, their second grandchild, and they didn't get to meet him for several months. And, of course, most of the last 25 years our parents haven't been able to see our kids regularly.

So now, our son, who made us parents and my parents grandparents, has made us grandparents and my parents great-grandparents! A momentous week indeed.

We get to fly to Australia in less than two weeks to meet our granddaughter and spend Christmas with all our kids. That's going to be really precious, and I'm going to try to dwell on that, because it's easy for me to let the inevitable goodbye at the end of that time to colour the time we get to spend with them all.

But I've also got a difficult decision (wink!). I made cross-stitch birth gifts for almost all my nieces and nephews (here's a blog post about one I completed in 2010). Will I continue the tradition for my grandchildren? I'm not a knitter or crocheter. I've done a lot of cross-stitch in the last 27 years, but I consider myself semi-retired from cross-stitch because it's getting much harder as my eyes age. I have a really nice magnifying/light in Australia, but couldn't fit it in my luggage to bring to Japan. I guess I could try a larger count Aida cloth and a simple pattern? I'll have to think about it...I do have some nice patterns on my shelves. We'll see.

Unexpected tears

More unexpected joy this week, but you're going to have to bear with me a tiny bit because there's backstory to why I was crying during a two-hour predominantly Japanese-language OMF celebration on Monday.

For a long time I've had a passion to share missionary's stories. It's stories that grab people's attention, and missionaries collectively have some amazing ones to tell, but often not the time or skill or passion to get them out to a wider audience. It's my joy to be pretty much working with missionaries and their stories most of the time these days. 

In 2017 I had a unique opportunity to start a blog for OMF Japan that has become a wonderful vehicle for getting missionary's stories about Japan out to a wide audience. I've had the support of OMF Japan leadership and the field in this endeavour and the last eight years we have published one story a week on our website...that's around 400 stories. At almost the same time I joined with one of my colleagues to start OMF Japan Facebook and Instagram pages as ways to get our website stories seen even further.

Fast forward to today and I'm working with a creative team of five on our social media, and getting stories from across Japan to share with thousands of our followers. In September this year we had the theme "Partnering with Japanese churches" and one of my team members asked one of her colleagues, AJ, for a story about the church that he is planting in partnership with their church. AJ wrote a really good story. As soon as I read it I knew this was important to share with our audience. So, I edited it and then we got it out there (you can see it here).

On Monday, we celebrated the 75th anniversary of missionaries coming to Japan with OMF and 60th anniversary of missionaries going from Japan to other parts of Asia with OMF. It was a joint two-hour gathering in a church in downtown Tokyo.

A portion of AJ's story was shared as a key part of the message presented by OMF International's General Director (GD), in fact, he used it to bookend his talk on John 3: 29, 30.

In particular, this bit:

When we first began exploring the idea of planting a new church, I sat down with our Japanese pastor from Hatogaya and admitted, “I am scared of this undertaking.” . . .

Pastor Oshima listened and I will never forget his response. He simply smiled and said, “That’s okay. I’m scared too. Let’s be scared together.” 

I was stunned, and delighted. And teary. 

Our organisation is very large, over 2,500 people actively engaged in various ways across the globe. The GD is from Taiwan and works in Singapore, I've met him only once and never had a conversation with him. Yet this story had reached him and he used it to encourage his largely Japanese audience (with translation) to push on in doing God's work.

I only had a tiny part to play in this, but somehow God took my "two small fish" and used them for his glory.

To be fair, there were other elements in the gathering that had me pulling out a tissue, before and after this surprise. Most of the talking was in Japanese and the only speech that I really understood was the one spoken in English by the GD. 

But we sang. One of the songs, "One Voice" I first encountered it in Japanese during our first term in Hokkaido. I learned it during a very difficult time in my life when I felt pretty useless and exhausted (two little boys under 5 + trying to work in a Japanese church without much language or capacity). It makes me emotional most times I sing it! Interestingly, the English version doesn't affect me at all!

English lyrics:

Father, we ask of You this day
Come and heal our land
Knit our hearts together
That Your glory might be seen in us
Then the world will know
That Jesus Christ is Lord

Let us be one voice that glorifies Your name
Let us be one voice declaring that You reign
Let us be one voice in love and harmony
And we pray, O God, grant us unity

Now is the time for you and I
To join our hearts in praise
That the name of Jesus
Will be lifted high above the earth
Then the world will know
That Jesus Christ is Lord

After the service they had some refreshments and there was much mingling amongst those gathered. The prayer booklet, Beneath the Surface, was for sale, in English and Japanese, this is another project that I had deep involvement in in 2019/20. I'm always excited to see it "out in the wild" as it's also one of my editing babies! I had just had a conversation the day before with someone from our church who's very excited about this booklet, she's sent it to her mum in New Zealand who is also excited and it giving it away to whoever she can. My friend asked me for 10 more copies!

I was exhausted by the end of Monday. It included four trains and an hour-long car journey and constant interaction from the moment I climbed into the car before 8 am. But also so much brimming with joy at God's good gifts to me that day. Though I periodically feel pretty useless and not worthy of being used by God in Japan, he continues to call me and to encourage me, and even use my "two small fish" (see the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand in John 6).

Unexpected joy

I had a fun day yesterday. The backdrop was autumn colour and the amazing network of people that life in missionary circles brings you. Add a layer to that: a long car trip within Tokyo made interesting by a couple of well-researched and presented podcasts. Then, later, another sound track: that of a gym full of wrestlers training and conversations with spectators. Even later, the sound of two video calls: one with a son and the other with church members from various countries sharing with one another at a prayer meeting.

Over lunch, at a cafe about 30 km away, I met up with some old friends and some new, all from the US, though almost all had spent lots of time outside that country. Conversation was wide and varied—tea and scones, life in Japan, education of deaf kids in the US (which I was appalled to hear is dreadfully lacking), Deaflympics, Costa Rica, ministry to at-risk women, and how God lead two of those present into their current ministry to missionary families with kids that have special needs. Oh, and we talked about wrestling too!

Most of those present have a child with a disability. Three of those present have a child who is a wrestler.

One family, friends of friends, was in Japan for the Deaflympics with their son who is a pretty talented wrestler, in both GrecoRoman and Freestyle (our boys only did the latter, but the former is also an Olympic sport, and basically is wrestling that only allows you to touch, or use, the upper body). I knew that these people were in town and had earlier hatched a plan to see if we couldn't connect up this young man with the CAJ wrestling team, who are currently training for the first meet of the season. It was a bit of a mad scheme that actually came off and yesterday afternoon I was also able to welcome them to CAJ and the wrestling team.

I ended up sticking around at training for a couple of hours, talking with those who were on the side, and just absorbing the wrestling vibes—remembering the faces we got to know in January and February this year when we hung out with the team for several days. Yes, it is this season again and, our part-time hobby (how else can I describe it?) is digging its claws into us again. On the first Saturday of December I'm helping David run the tournament that CAJ holds each year and we have also been asked to help out with chaperoning the girls team to an away tournament at the end of January (I'm sure I'll have more to share on that closer to the time).

But I had yet another unexpected surprise yesterday: I went looking for crutches for an injured wrestler and was surprised to discover a basketball coach who is Australian and a trained physio. So cool to find just the help we needed on campus already (and an Aussie at that!).

One of my delights is making connections between people who otherwise never would have met. I am not a matchmaker of the Anne of Green Gables sort, but I do love a good introduction that leads to a new friendship or partnership between those who are introduced.

Our day ended as most of our Wednesdays have done in recent months: with a video chat with one of our sons over dinner, followed by an online prayer meeting with more than a dozen people from our church in Japan. It was a bit of a hectic day, but when my head finally hit the pillow, I was full of joy at what God had brought my way.

Fostering gifts

It's starting to look as autumnal 
as it feels in Tokyo.

I am grappling with what it means to call myself a writer. I've been doing that for a few years now and the evidence has mounted up that I am indeed a writer, but can I fully step into the unknown and complete a bigger project of my own? As in, can I write a book?

Twice in the last week I've been challenged on this front. Last Friday I stepped out of my comfort zone and travelled into town to an in-person writers group with other English-speakers. This is only the second meeting of this group, the first meeting I attended online. In-person feels a lot more confronting and was helpful for my motivation. I had to confess that, in the last 15 years, I've written well over 3,000 blog posts. If I've got a worthwhile idea for a book (and I think I do), then somehow I have to harness the discipline that I've used to write all that on this blog to pull something longer together and push through all the way to finish the project. 

Then I stumbled upon this article called "On hoarding wealth and fostering gifts". The author writes, "God has given you talents—things you may be unusually good at. Are you using these for his glory? . . . God has bestowed on you a greater-than-usual enthusiasm for a certain issue or cause. Are you pursuing it enthusiastically?"

Summer cypress are fun bushes that
turn red in the autumn. These ones
are growing out of a crack at the side
of the road.

God has given me talents and enthusiasms. I'm no genius writer, but I have a passion for it and I've nurtured it and worked on it. I am using it for God's glory, but can I pursue it more enthusiastically? Can I be a better steward of my time?

This brings to mind a children's song called "You were bought" by Colin Buchanan (based on 1 Cor 6:19–20 ).

"You were bought at a great price

Jesus' perfect sacrifice

So in your body glorify the Lord...

So there's this couple in their late 50s

They retire to a beautiful house by the beach

They have a beautiful boat,

They play golf and tennis and they collect shells."

You can see the whole video here.

Look up or you'll miss it!

The story in the song about shells is a true story that comes from a John Piper story in his book "Don't waste your life".

The climax of the song is when they meet Jesus at judgment. 

They say, "Look Lord, see my shells." 

The song continues: "Shells schmells. It's what you do for God that counts. Don't waste your life."

It's worth pondering. So this week I've decided to make some changes to how I'm using my time, changes that I hope will allow me to push forward on this book idea much faster than I have been in the last six months!