2025: A Year In Review
Building Foundations, Reconnecting, and Unexpected Journeys
Hello.
This isn’t a typical highlights reel of 2025. It isn’t a list of what happened. It isn’t another New Year post encouraging resolutions and unachievable goals.
This is a space. A space to breathe. A space to pause before the calendar rolls into a New Year. A space to consider what has been. To ponder. To be honest. And to be grateful.
So before we go any further, I just want to say – thank you for being here. It means a lot that you are here and journeying with me. Whether this is your first time interacting with A Curious Follower or you have been here since the start – you are welcome here.
Building Foundations
This year, A Curious Follower found its way into the world.
Earlier this year, the first blog post went public. The writing I had often been doing in private, becoming public.
The project I had been working on, Growing with God began breathing a life of its own. The SPACE – EXPLORE – PRACTICE model used in group settings to give breathing space for weary and tired people. And, who isn’t tired these days? But this space was and is for more than just weariness, it is for breathing new life into the dreams long forgotten or pushed aside. The very dreams that God was and is using to breathe curiosity, attention, vulnerability, invitation, and wonder back into this world.
The book I had been working on long before A Curious Follower was conceived – The Radical Recall to Rest found its way into the hands of people around this country and the world. A book that breathes the SPACE – EXPLORE – PRACTICE model, that reclaims Sabbath, rediscovers rest, and reimagines rest for our Christian communities.
But those moments, important as they are, don’t really capture the heart of the year.
What has mattered most has been the conversations. Emails that lingered. Messages that arrived quietly. Long, honest chats about tiredness, faith, questions, and the longing for something slower and more grounded.
Again and again, I’ve been struck by how, in a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence and automation, people seem to be yearning for something deeply and unmistakably human – presence, attention, spaces where they don’t have to perform or keep up.
Without much planning, A Curious Follower has slowly become that kind of place for some. That has felt both humbling and surprising.
But all of this, has felt like the start of something good. I can hold my hands up and say that I may be biased. But the conversations, the writing, the spaces – all feel like they are building good foundations. We are on an unknown journey, drawn towards a destination we cannot yet fully see. The path remains unclear, and yet the direction of travel feels, somehow, right.
Reconnecting
I have used writing to help me understand the world around me, to make sense of what is happening, what I am feeling, where I might be noticing God, where I might be noticing other things. And for the longest time I ran from this.
It connected me to God – yes – but it connected me to God in one of the most vulnerable ways. There is no hiding behind pretence or wilful ignorance here. That is scary.
So often I found myself fearful, not of meeting with God but of what that meant – often uncomfortable truths, uncomfortable paths, uncomfortable answers, more uncomfortable questions. This vulnerability, I am learning, is worth pushing through. This discomfort is worth pushing through.
Having space to write freely has allowed room for excitement, sadness, questions, and hope to sit together without needing to be resolved. In those moments, I’ve sensed God doing something new – not always dramatic or obvious, but alive and gentle, growing beneath the surface.
That noticing has sustained me more than I expected. So in many ways, writing has been the gift of the year. It has helped me reconnect with my own soul, and return – again and again – to God.
Unexpected Journeys
This year has had its fair share of unexpected journeys. As I’m sure there has been for you too. Life is full of unpredictability. The Holy Spirit is wild and interrupts. With or without God there is chaos. With God, that chaos becomes something closer to “chaordic” – chaos and order held in tension. Peace is possible without all the answers. Forgiveness is possible without reconciliation. Love is possible without any logical reason.
One of the on-going unexpected journeys of the year has been learning – and re-learning – that I don’t get to decide what resonates. Some writing I assumed would land well drifted past practically unnoticed. Other pieces, which I wasn’t sure about at all, found their way into people’s lives and stayed there.
It’s reminded me that this work isn’t about ‘cleverness’ or control. It’s about honesty and release – offering what feels true, and trusting it to go where it needs to go. That trust, hasn’t always come easily, but it is so necessary.
Another unexpected journey this year has been the conversations I’ve found myself in – where we know, academically and theologically, that rest matters, and yet living it has been far slower and more demanding than expected. I’ve had many conversations where the desire for rest is clear, but the reality feels just out of reach. Moments where the pull towards busyness, productivity, and constant output has been strong – especially when the world seems to reward exactly that.
Choosing to rest on Jesus rather than on visibility, momentum, or success has felt deeply countercultural. And choosing a slower pace has meant sitting with tension rather than escaping it.
Ending Well
So as this calendar year comes to an end, I find myself drawn back to one of the quiet calls at the heart of A Curious Follower – words from a song that never stays on repeat, but always seems to arrive when I need it most:
“If all that you are is not all you desires then come.
Come, come alone
Come with fear, come with love
Come however you are.
Just come, come alone
Come with friends, come with faults
Come however you are
Just come, come alone
Come with me, and let go
Come however you are
Just come, come alone
Come so carefully close
Come however you are
Just come
Come, come alone
Come with sorrows and songs
Come however you are
Just come, come alone
Come with yourself below
Come however you are
Just come”
So this is where things stand as the year draws to a close.
No resolutions. No neat conclusions. Just an honest naming of the ground beneath our feet.
As one year becomes the next, you’re welcome to stay – to read, to listen, to keep noticing. If all that you are is not all you desire, then come. You don’t have to arrive with answers. Just come as you are.
For now, I’m setting this year down with thanks – noticing what has been, the contours of the journey, the blessings and the challenges of a year where everything and nothing has changed at the same time.
May you have a restful and blessed New Year.
Josh | A Curious Follower
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