Happy New Year everybody!! How has the few hours of 2026 been so far?! I’ve really been enjoying reading everyone’s 2025-reflection/2026-goals posts!

This year has gone by very quickly and somehow very slowly. Buckle up y’all, because we are talking faith, writing, deep thoughts, and 2026 goals in this post.

What’s happened in my life?

Well, I kicked off 2025 by getting baptized in February. A couple months later, in April, I went on a mission trip to Swannanoa, North Carolina. (That’s when I lived in Washington.)

When June came around, my family moved from Washington to North Carolina and my brother, dad, and I took a little over two weeks on a cross-country trip as we made our way to our new house. Then my family went to Wilmington, NC, for my dad’s Coast Guard retirement ceremony, two days later I flew back to Washington for a summer camp at my old church, and then I came home before flying to Massachusetts three weeks later for my best friend’s 18th birthday.

We bought a labradoodle puppy who we named Radley, and then Thanksgiving and Christmas came around eventually—both were celebrated with family and in between those, I turned seventeen and got my own car.

What’s happened at The Faithful Wanderer?

The Faithful Wanderer has grown a lot over the past year and I wanted to share some of the blog’s stat differences between 2024 and 2025, because let me tell you: 2025 was much better, in my opinion.

In 2024 I had 73 posts compared to 303 posts in 2025—that’s 230 more! With those extra 230 posts, I wrote around 150.2K words total versus my mere 34K from 2024 (so 184,200 words total).

As for my traffic, I had 281 likes and 84 comments in the year of 2024 and 4K likes and 1.7K comments in 2025! Y’all were on a roll, thank you so much for your support!

2025 Life Stats:

~I went to three dances—Tolo, a formal, and Night to Shine
~I went to three concerts—Forrest Frank, Crowder/Passion/Kari and Cody Carnes, and NEEDTOBREATHE
~I visited three National Parks—the Redwoods, the Grand Canyon, and Alcatraz (which, yes, is technically a National Park)
~I went on four trips this year (road trip from Washington to North Carolina, to the beach in North Carolina, visiting Washington, and visiting Massachusetts)

2025 Writing Stats:

~I was accepted into three anthologies (Through Rays of Light is the only one published so far)
~I listened to 52,950 minutes of music
~I interviewed four authors (Scott LeRette, Gordon Korman, Lois Lowry, and Isabel Marie)
~I started a newsletter and a Substack
~I guest-posted six times for several blogs (check out those here)
~I had eight guest posts published on The Faithful Wanderer (check those out here)
~I hosted five (I’m 99% sure it’s five) writing competitions (see all the winners here)
~I finished one novella project and in total (including 2024) have published 376 blog posts on The Faithful Wanderer

2025 Highlights:

~I got the chance to meet one of my heroes and favorite authors, Gregory Boyle, and take a picture with him. I hope that someday I’ll be able to do that again and maybe get the chance to have a conversation with him.
~Flying back to Washington for summer camp was one of the best decisions of my life—I know that God had a message in mind for me and that message has been ingrained in my soul ever since.
~Starting my job at Chick-fil-A has been a great thing for me! I’ve loved getting to know my coworkers and have something to keep me busy and provide a community.
~Maintaining friendships, visiting and having visitors has been the best part of 2025. I’ve been able to keep old friends and make new ones, and each one has had an incredible impact on my heart. I’m forever grateful that God has given me the chance to have these friendships.
~And finally, another big one, was getting published in Skillful Pen Press‘s anthology, Through Rays of Light. 2025 means that I got the chance to become a published author! No, it’s not my own project, but it was a big step to that accomplishment.

2026 Goals:

As of right now, I have a handful of goals for 2026 of all sorts: writing related, faith related, and school related.

The biggest one is finishing my current project, When I Said Goodbye, which you can read if you subscribe to The Faithful Wanderer Newsletter. Right now I want this to be my project of the year—to finish drafting and begin editing and all that jazz.

My faith-related goal is to read a handful of books by theologians. I want to start reading deeper books on the Christian faith that aren’t just cool revelations but factual studies on the Bible.

For school, my biggest goal is figuring out what I want to do after high school. I think that’s a big enough goal in itself. You may be saying, “But Willow, you still have a year and a half!” Sure, sure, but that will go by fast—especially when you don’t know what the heck you want to do after high school.

In the year of 2026 I want to also interview some more authors, so I’ve been looking for people to contact. So far I’ve had a couple of people say yes, but with the holidays, it’s hard for people to get back to me so we’ll see! But hopefully within the next month or two I’ll have published a couple posts or videos with author or speaker interviews.

Now, if you read my last post (December Recap: What Happened This Month?) then you might remember that I said I had an (supposedly) fun activity sheet and yessiree I do!

Here’s what it is and the story behind it: one of my friends and I were doing a 2025 reflection call (because she doesn’t live near me) and we talking about things we were proud of for doing in 2025 and then things we were going to do in 2026.

I came up with the idea of doing prompts to do throughout the year such as, “Something that scares you.” For me, that would be skydiving—it scares me but I want to do it so badly! Or another one is, “Something that is out of your comfort zone.” That would be going to the gym—it also scares me, but it’s very doable and I would like to be jacked someday.

Anyways—we thought it was a good prompting for things to do this year. Not resolutions, but loose goals that we can easily (with work of course) achieve without it being something we force ourselves to do (such as completing a novel).

So that’s what this is about: I created a pdf for y’all with two pages of prompts like that and then space for you to fill them out (if you print it out or whatever) and then two pages of actual ideas for you to do in the year of 2026! Some are spontaneous-type, some take more planning, and some are serious while some are kind of fun.

So I hope you enjoy that!

Now finally, we’re going to get all fun and deep and do a lil Q&A between myself. (Meaning: I came up with the questions and I’m answering them.)

What were my favorite memories of 2025?

I really loved getting to do a worship night by myself—I’ve done that a handful of times and it’s been just as good each time. It’s certainly an experience that I am so glad I’ve gotten to have, even if it’s simple but I really think that’s why I like it so much.

Another favorite memory was the summer camp in Washington—I wrote a post about it called Unload Your Pack which is actually one of my favorite posts I’ve written—and once you go read that post, then it will pretty much explain it. God works in ways that are unexpected and I think those are the coolest moments ever.

And finally, my other favorite memory was when I flew to Massachusetts to surprise my bestie for her 18th birthday. She had zero clue I was coming and it was just too fun to see her expression when I walked out of her kitchen into the dining room where she’d just walked in from school. I was smiling and laughing and she was just standing there, shooketh. We had a great weekend together and my adult bestie is growing up so fast…

Kidding, kidding—she’s totally the mom in our friendship, sure as heck not me. I am 100% the crazy kid.

What is something I’m leaving in 2025?

Well, like I said in Unload Your Pack, there was something I was holding onto with the grip of a demented python. And I’ll be quite frank—even after that moment at camp, there have been several times when I try to hang onto it again if I see a picture or hear a song or whatever sentimental crap I do.

This isn’t healthy and it’s not what God had planned for me, He wanted me to unload my pack completely, not partially. So now that we are in 2026, I am officially leaving this burden in 2025.

Just because it’s a new year doesn’t mean it’s automatically gone, though. It will take prayer and dedication to remove myself from the grip of that demented python. But I know that it will be worth it in the end, even if it’s a painful struggle to pull away.

What are my favorite writing projects or posts from 2025?

Okay—are you ready for this long answer?

For favorite writing project: I wrote a short story called When The World Abandoned Us which I had a blast writing and I wrote a short story The Boy In The Mirror, which I loved writing and editing and all that! I really enjoyed it and those two have been my favorite projects ever I think—I’m hoping to get back into TBITM shortly, maybe if I have a lull in my current WIP.

For my favorite posts…I have a list.

First one is Stars and Whales: How Great Is Our God. I love the story and it just means a lot to me! I also contacted Louie Giglio about an interview and his team said that he was too busy. But…then he emailed me personally and sent me a message talking about that day (which I write about in this post) and it really meant the world that he would take the time to write to me. (No, I’m sorry, you do not get to read the email. That’s nunya business.)

The second one, like I said, is Unload Your Pack. I’ve talked enough about that one though, so I’ll just leave it at that.

My third favorite is “Religion Treated Me Badly.” This might sound weird, but I’m really passionate about this topic because it’s so hard to watch churches and pastors and Christians being manipulative in a way that poorly represents the true meaning of the Church (as a whole) and Jesus Christ. So that’s just my thoughts!

And my fourth is Saying Goodbye: Blessing or Curse? Goodbye is a common phrase in my life and I’m sure you can relate—and sometimes goodbye can feel like both a blessing and a curse, and sometimes you don’t know which it is. It’s a weird feeling but I think that it’s really important to know that sometimes saying goodbye is good, and other times, the fact that you have someone to say a hard goodbye to is good as well.

I have many other favorite posts, but these ones all have been posts I’ve really enjoyed writing and been excited about posting and sharing with y’all. I hope that you guys enjoy them as much as I do!

One more question.

What is one thing I learned about myself this year?

I learned a lot, but one thing I learned about myself is what I’m passionate about.

I discovered that I’m passionate about writing, about my faith, about mental health, about loving others, and about sharing my thoughts.

It’s important to know what you’re passionate about—a lot of the things I’m passionate about I want to make a career out of, but whether I do or don’t doesn’t really matter because these are all things I love learning or talking about. And these will all benefit me someday in one way or another.

~Final thoughts and conclusion~

So as we close the first post of 2026, I want to tell YOU something.

Thank you. Thank you so so much for your support! I cannot tell you how much it means to me—your support in my faith, my newsletter and blog, my career, and everything in between. It means the world and I love getting to write knowing that you are going to be reading it. I never thought I’d share writing of any kind with anyone and now I do—who saw that coming?!

But in all seriousness: thank you so much and I look forward to seeing where we have all come in a year!

And now I’d love to hear from you in the comments:

What is something you accomplished this year? Some highlights or favorite memories? What is something you learned about yourself? And please feel free to share any other thoughts on 2025!

Thanks for reading, friends!
~Willow