When It's Hard to See the Highlights: how to find hope at the end of a hard year

It’s hard for me right now to see the highlights in a year that was so low.

I wrote these words in January of 2024, as I looked back on the previous year. Now, at the beginning of 2025, I’m in much the same place.

This past year has been another hard one, and it’s hard to see the highlights.

I’m not ready to share about the specific hard stuff of this last year, but I don’t think I need to for you to relate.

​In conversations I’ve had, so many have expressed how this year has been a hard one for them, too. There’s been the aching sorrow of loss, unanswered questions and unanswered prayers, illness in many forms, relentless worries, setbacks in hopes and dreams, weariness of body and heart, spiritual attacks, discouragement in faith, and feeling distant from God.

Friend, how was your year?

Perhaps you answer, It was really good! It held so much adventure and connection and opportunities and blessing! It was the best year yet!

Or perhaps that’s not how you answer. Rather, tears come to your eyes and you let out a sorrowful sigh. Instead of highlights coming to mind, your memories are marked by grief, pain, confusion, disappointment, worry, sorrow, and longing. And instead of feeling hopeful for a new year, that grief, pain, confusion, disappointment, worry, sorrow, and longing are still heavy on your heart.

Or perhaps your answer is somewhere in between.

Either way, that’s okay. Either way, I’d be honored to hear your answer, and to celebrate and cry with you.

If you're coming into this new year feeling weary, discouraged, and sorrowful, if you’re having a hard time finding the highlights and finding your hope, I’d like to share this encouragement with you, if that’s all right? (And even if you’re not feeling this way, may this still encourage you, and may this help you in being an encouragement to those who are.)

Psalm 23 is one of a few passages of Scripture that I have memorized, and over this past year, I’ve found myself quoting it near daily—when my anxious mind won’t calm down so I can sleep at night; when the negative self-talk begins to shame and condemn; when my thoughts are tempted to go in a direction I know isn’t helpful or holy.

At different times, different phrases from this Psalm have stood out, spoken to, and comforted me with God’s promises: The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He restores my soul. I will fear no evil, for You are with me.

As this year comes to a close and we enter into a new one, it’s the first half of the last verse that’s been speaking to and sustaining me: Surely Your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life. (v. 6, NIV)

Here is how this line is worded is some other translations:

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. ESV
Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life. NLT
Certainly goodness and faithfulness will follow me all the days of my life. NASB
Your goodness and unfailing kindness shall be with me all of my life. TLB
Truly, goodness and gracious love will pursue me all the days of my life. ISB

God’s goodness and love, His grace and mercy, His kindness and faithfulness—it’s there: both along the quiet waters and through the dark valleys; both in the green pastures and in the face of opposition; both when our soul is restored and our cup overflows, and when our soul is grieving, hurting, longing, and our cup is drained dry by confusion, worry, disappointment, and sorrow.

This goodness and love that follows, pursues, enfolds, and sustains—it doesn’t wax and wane like the moon in the darkness; it doesn’t rise and fall like the mountains and valleys we traverse; it doesn’t ebb and flow like the tidal waves of our emotions.

It is unfailing, unchanging, unwavering.

When it’s hard to see the highlights, this highlighted verse in my Bible proclaims: God’s goodness and love are here—even in the grief, pain, confusion, disappointment, worry, sorrow, and longing--all the days of our lives.

This means when there are days, months, seasons when it’s hard to see the highlights, we can let the tears fall, we can let our year be, and we can look for the light.

Let the Tears Fall
Whatever this year held that made it hard; that made it not what you had hoped; that weighted your heart with worry, sorrow, and pain—it’s okay to cry about this.

It’s okay to let your tears fall.

Crying in our heart-brokenness, our weariness, our sadness, our loneliness, our anxiousness doesn’t mean we’re saying that God isn’t good or that we’re ungrateful for the the good things He has done for us.

It means we need to pour out our hurts and worries and sorrows and frustrations and hearts and souls to our Father, entrusting to His goodness and love the aching breaks and cracks of all we wish was different, healed, better, restored, made new.

Let Your Year Be
As we come to the end of a year that was hard, we don’t have to strain and strive for highlights in an effort to make the year seem better. We don’t have to manufacture meaning out of the hardships or create faith lessons from the suffering to prove God was with us.

We can let the year be what it was. We can let the year be a year that was hard; a year we suffered loss; a year we wrestled with worries and doubts; a year we were depressed and discouraged; a year illness wracked our bodies and sorrow wracked our hearts; a year that held setback after setback. 

Because a hard year doesn’t mean a year that God abandoned us. A hard year doesn’t mean a year that His goodness and love stopped following us. A hard year doesn’t mean a year that He won’t one day heal and restore.

Look for the Light
It’s hard to find the highlights—those times of perfection when we think, It can’t get any better than this. Those times we can readily, easily point to and say, God was there. There is His glory. There is His presence.

But maybe instead of looking for the highlights, we could simply look for the light—glimmers of God’s goodness and love in the dark, aching, burdened, messy, weeping breaks and cracks of our lives, of our hearts.

The sense of His presence amidst the pain; a hug from a loved one; the promises from His Word we cling to; the comforting smell of a favorite candle; the strength from His Spirit to keep going; the taste of a favorite meal; peace after a desperate prayer; the sparrows and wildflowers that remind us He cares for us; a timely text from a friend; direction for just the next step to take; the song that uplifts our spirits; the hope of the New Heaven and New Earth.

All Him saying, You are not forgotten. You are not abandoned. You are seen, you are heard, you are held.

Because these glimmers of light are glimpses of the Light—His face shining on us in glory, goodness, compassion, wisdom, grace, mercy, power, love.

He was there.
With us.

He is here.
With us.

Present, all days of our lives.

And at the end of those days, He will bring us home, with Him.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
     He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
     he restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness
     for his name’s sake. 
Even though I walk
     through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
     for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
     they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
     in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
     my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and love will follow me
     all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
​     forever.
Psalm 23, NIV 1984