Thursday Things #124

A last minute $10 gift idea, a Christmas treat, a cozy candle selection, and a personal note from yours truly.

Dec 12, 2024

Every other Thursday, I share a handful of good things I'm loving, reading, watching, listening to or just discovered. AKA the random good stuff we’d talk about over coffee or text if we had one another’s phone number. I'm glad you're here!

Hey, hi, hello it has been a minute!

Technically there have been 5 emails/articles/devotionals/whathaveyous since TT #123 (which probably explains why it feels like I have zero words and why social has been quieter) . . .

Let this be my story (paid subscribers)
When Church Feels like a Haunted House (all subscribers) (thank you for your kind words on this one, friends 💛)
Announcing: the weight of waiting (all subscribers)
Silence (all subscribers)
Low (paid subscribers)

. . . but with the way Thanksgiving and Christmas fall this year, Thursday Things is super spaced out for November/December. #125 will pick back up in 2025! (I didn’t realize the matching ‘25’ until writing it out this very moment and wow, yay, it’s almost like I planned it! I didn’t. But let’s pretend. :))

(Paid subscribers, you have 3 more emails coming between now and then! Advent week three + Advent week four + a list of all my 5-star reads from 2024.)

For now, here is another round-up of good things! I’d love for you to comment on this post and add a few of YOUR favorites—recent, or overall faves of 2024. (Click the comment button at the top or bottom. I read each message!)

You know it, I know it, now America knows it.

My love for Wicked is, ahem, unliiiiiiiiiimited. 🎵 (Cue the soundtrack.)

This is not new news. I’m going to show great restraint and avoid writing 1,500 (more) words about the movie here, but to each of you who reached out asking for my thoughts and/or to say you heard about it from me at some point and you’re leaving the theater now and you’ve fully jumped on the bandwagon—hi you’re lovely thank you and welcome to the green side.

In an effort to show self-control here, but also to include it because WOWZ IT IS A GOOD THING, I’ll just say Wicked: Part One gets all the stars from me. All of them. (Well, minus one for A Sentimental Man. Yeesh. But… it’s the weakest part of the broadway show so I guess there’s something for consistency.) I was so nervous. And then I was so delighted. My 8th-grade-self is very happy (couldn’t be happierrrrr 🎵) they did it justice, and my current-day-self is planning her return to the Gershwin in 2025.

Wood wick candles from Walmart.

The crackle of a wood wick candle is just the best, especially in the winter, and I’m really loving the new ones from Better Homes & Gardens. I bought five this fall when they were $5 each and I’m down to my last two, despite the 40-hour burn time. Everything else goes under my beloved candle warmer (p.s. I love that so many of us have the same one from the previous TT letter!) but this time of year? Wood wick all the way for me.

Most of the 14.3oz jars are showing as currently out of stock in my town, but the scents I chose are available as regular candles. Here’s the full category so you can poke around, as well as the 5 I loved:

Blue Fern & Citrus
Warm Leather & Amber
Noble Fir & Pine
Sandalwood & Cardamon Musk
Salted Coconut & Mahogany

When I tell you I went back for two more bags.

Every once in a while, Aldi has a surprise winner and this right here belongs on the list:

I won’t judge you one bit if you go with the suggested serving size of three, but you can easily make the bag stretch so much further. I love a dessert, but half a piece of one of these is the perfect end-of-day Christmas-time treat. With my two extra bags, I’m set for the rest of the season. 🎄

(FWIW: They don’t taste toothpaste-y and if you’re hosting a holiday gathering, they’d be a perfect addition to a dessert charcuterie board.)

There’s a white chocolate version too if that’s your thing.

(Though why would you friend, why would you…)

A last minute gift idea.

I bought these sunglasses for Venice, figuring if I lost them or they broke, it wouldn’t be too much of a bummer. Well, six months later and they’re one of the two pairs I wear on a regular basis. I love the unique shape of the frame, they’re super lightweight, and they’ve held up so well! I got them for half off, but they’re 60% off today! (If you’re reading this later and they’re no longer on sale, seriously just wait a day and check again. It seems like half of Loft is on sale every other day.)

Two all-time favorite Christmas songs.

For variety, I’m purposely sharing two favorites that aren’t part of ‘the weight of waiting’ . . . these definitely aren’t brand new, but when my personal Christmas playlist arrives at either of these, there’s a 100% chance I’ll hit repeat several times before letting the loop continue.

A note from me to you.

It feels strange to write this on December 12th, especially since there are other emails going out this month with the Advent series, but since the next Thursday Things will arrive in 2025…

Can I go ahead and say, now—

What a year it has been.
Thank you.

71 emails here, if you count both free and paid. (I sure as heck do. Oy with the ~~poodles~~ words.) (Name that show.1) 131 Instagram posts. (Who even knows on Facebook.) I deleted my Twitter account with joy, joined Threads (it’s just so much kinder), and panicked when I went (very unexpectedly) internationally viral.2 (Apparently my mind immediately goes to “was I hacked again?!” What a relief to be wrong.) There was the Holy Week email series—here, in the week of it all. And of course we’re halfway through the Advent series—the weight of waiting. We got to talk with several truly incredible authors via Zoom in the All The Things community (paid subscribers). I was published in three more books and celebrated something3 that looks deceptively like a number but is actually, underneath, just faithfulness.

That’s on the personal writing front—(I can’t/won’t even begin to add in the writing/designing for clients here because #math, so let’s just summarize by saying tens of thousands of words, thousands of posts, and several hundred designs.) (No one should do math in December. I’d like to formally petition to make that a law.)—and when I write it out here, it looks like a lot that’s mostly good. And it is a lot. And some of it was, I’d say, good.4

On the often unpixelated personal life front, though? Well, it’s a both/and mix of a lot just like every other human. I traveled solo internationally for the first time; it was really difficult and really delightful, both. (Travel is always a guaranteed both/and, isn’t it?!) (Ps go to Venice!!!) I got to know a thoughtful man who ended up not being the right man for me. My health tanked, then it soared with the 14-years-in-the-waiting news I shared here5, then it rollercoaster-ed to the new normal. I went back to school. :) :) I worked behind-the-scenes for someone I’ve held in high esteem since middle school and discovered things on the other side of the screen are not always what they seem. I wrestled (nope, wrestle, not past tense) with whether wisdom = keeping quiet when dear ones repost with glowing words, as I did for so long, unknowingly. God, in His generosity, opened a different (healthy and kind) door. And: I continued working for the 4 women that have been clients since day 1 nearly a decade ago. That line right there is nothing short of a wild gift. I made some great new friends. I was very lonely. I called the cops more times than I’m gonna put here. I cried tears of joy over a not-shared-online-yet dream. I cried enough to fill buckets over a broken friendship. I dared to hope. I had to let a lot of things go. I wondered about finances when monthly bills literally tripled and I worked like crazy and God provided manna, always, every day, each and every time. I wrote a few of the pieces I’m most proud of in my entire life. I wrote a couple pieces that I knew could be so much better, but a deadline is a deadline and sometimes your capacity is just so much smaller—and you find out that’s okay. Not ideal, not the health miracle you still pray for, but also okay. Because manna. I could keep going long past the email character count limits, but there are already more personal lines here (swipe through the images)—so I’ll stop and say again:

For the highs and the lows, the words and the quiet spaces in between the letters, the absolute randomness of Thursday Things and the deeply personal pieces that slip in throughout the year. Thank you, paid subscribers, for supporting my writing—you keep the actual lights on, and you also help make it possible for me to continue offering some free posts written after work hours. Thank you for inviting me into your inbox in a time where we receive what feels like 525,6006 emails and notifications a week. Thank you for every time you’ve commented, liked, or shared a post. Thank you for the generous new reviews of my book. Thank you for grace when I’m quiet and kindness when I’m here. Thank you for space to be a whole person, not a platform. Thank you for being friends.

It might not seem like much to you; it means the world to me.

I said it in September, and though it barely skims the surface, it’s deeply true: The last two years have been the hardest of my life, and 90% of it isn’t online. I’ve wanted to blast details from the rooftops and I’ve wanted to shut this all down. Trying my very best to love well by keeping quiet, while still showing up here with honest words, has been a tightrope walk in every. single. post.

But you’ve stuck around. And as we enter the days of reflecting over the previous year, I know I’ll count you among the gifts of 2024. Cheesy, yes, but also accurate.

For as long as God leads, I’m here. And I’m so glad you’re here, too.

Whatever your 2024 held, here you are, still standing. And also: here you are, held by a God who does not change.

Thank You Jesus for the manger, thank You Jesus for the cross, and thank You Jesus for a tomb that is still gloriously empty. What a good, good story it is that we’re living, even when the current page feels all kinds of ways. As I said once upon a time7 and ten thousand times since: We can trust the unknown of the future to the God we know is authoring its pages.

Whatever 2025 brings, thank God for God, we won’t face a moment alone. And also: May 2025 be the year of miracles.

I’ll see you back here soon. 💛

Good Things

Discussion about this post