It Is Finished

(Well, sort of. On the finished and unfinished work of living the loops)

A quick note of deepest gratitude for you, generous subscribers. I cannot thank you enough for your kindness and support. In gratitude, this final Artist’s Deck post is available to all, paying and non-paying subscribers. I’m just so glad and grateful you’re here.

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I lit 6 candles in the family room and settled on the couch with my coffee trying to listen for the words for this, my final post of 2024. I’d hoped the twinkling lights of the tree, the snoozing dog to my right, and the scent of balsam candles mingled with coffee would stir awake my tired brain. Can I find two or three good words to rub together to make something here? This is the question all writers have asked themselves at one time or another. Can I make something out of all of *this* (gestures at the air with empty hands)?

The final cards of the Artist’s Deck-in process

Somehow, because I’m bad at counting, or because I wasn’t paying attention, I fell short of the 52 cards for my Artist’s Deck. Originally, I’d intended to create one card for every week of the year, but in mid-November, I counted my cards and realized that I was short a few. After a few rather dramatic sighs and frustrated re-countings,—and a couple of mental lashes about how numbers remain my nemesis, I decided to tack the lost cards onto December’s hand and move on with finishing the project. I am pleased to share that I did finish what I set out to do, and that I enjoyed it immensely, and have another year-long project in mind. (More on that later.)

Perhaps because it’s December, the “season of perpetual hope”,¹ or because of an insistent groundswell of anticipation building for what’s to come in 2025, the final cards of the Artist’s Deck all brim with some much needed encouragement. I returned to a color scheme that I’d visited earlier—a dark teal with gold accents, which, if you’ve seen my office, should surprise no one. June’s cards featured a similar color scheme, and I am confident that as long as I live, these colors will keep showing up wherever I am. I hope you have colors like that in your life. Do you?—I’d love to know.

I don’t know how to wrap up this year. Like most years, there were gains and losses. We marked milestones and grieved things that felt like failures. Or deaths. I’ve been trying to sum up these last 11.75 months and a small epiphany dawned on me just last night, while standing at the kitchen sink.

Although I’ve been trying to draw lines that end in periods—that are final—full stop, what I’ve experienced instead, is a series of full-circle moments. Nearly every line I’ve attempted to punctuate and end, God has looped ‘round and tilted my perspective enough to see that what I’ve declared over-and-finished is in fact, still unfolding. I don’t think “closure” exists in a Kingdom where all things are being renewed. And perhaps that’s one of the greatest gifts of God’s promises. If all things are being made new², then perhaps finality is not a suitable craving—especially if it comes before a thing has been redeemed.

It’s as if the question God keeps asking me is, “can you make room to imagine that My work here is not finished?” As the year closes, I want the loose-ends tied off, but The Almighty seems to have other intentions (when is this ever not true?). Lines that end in periods feel solid, but a loop? A circle that keeps going-round-and-round? That feels…risky?

This year will wind down with a thousand loose personal and professional threads still dangling. So many of the unknowns that we carried in to 2024 remain with us, still looping, like a record that has not ended. I’m closing out this year with my arms full of questions and wonderings. Lines that refuse to be punctuated. This is likely true for you too. How many of us can close the book on one year only to open a fresh cover on the New Year, as if it’s a truly clean beginning? Our losses and our griefs companion us from year to year, don’t they? There is no tabula rasa at the turning of the calendar page. We are storied people whose stories continue to shift and unfold regardless of these artificial beginnings and endings stamped on us by clocks and calendars.

Advent reminds us that we are waiting people, and even as we celebrate a world-altering event in time—the birth of our Lord—we remain in waiting. I’m asking myself if I can see the waiting for all of these lines to become loops as a gift. I’m wondering if God is really always drawing circles rather than lines, because the circle implies a returning.

There’s no bow to tie here, which honestly, feels exactly right. I close out this year hopeful, expectant, with big decisions to make and exciting prospects ahead and scary risks on the horizon. I stand beside the manger gazing at God, full of both awe and my questions and uncertain-certainty in what I know, and do not know to be True—that I believe as I long have, that God was, and is, and is to come, and that one day, the circle of that promised redemption will close and turn-turn-turn into eternity.

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year, friends. May your joy be full and may your hope be renewed by the coming of Christ now, and in the end—which, of course, will in fact be the beginning.

…waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,…

Titus 2:13

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• I’m partnering with my friend, Summer Gross, and her Table of The Beloved group to host a monthly Art Examen. Our first one is happening on December 29. You can find the details and join us HERE.

• Join me for a creative Examen I’m calling, “Autopsy of a Season”, where we will make art in reflection of what has been, what has happened, and where we think God is calling us in the New Year. You can register for that HERE.

• Registration for the upcoming Refine retreat-workshop is closing on January 7. Details and registration are available HERE.

• I couple of weeks ago I put a few of the Artist’s Deck cards up for sale and you all snapped them up so quickly! ((Thank you)) The remaining few will be listed in the New Year. If you see one you like, stay tuned and be sure you’re subscribed to the Refine email list and following me on Instagram for first access to those when the sale opens.

1. Borrowed from one of the best moments in the film Home Alone

2. Revelation 21:5