What the Last 54 Days Have Taught Me

​Today is the last day of Medicare AEP, and as I sit here this morning, I feel a sense of stillness settling over me. For weeks, I’ve been waiting for this day to come. Counting down. Reaching for the finish line. But now that it’s here, I find myself reflecting on the whole of the experience, feeling the weight of the past 54 days.
Yesterday, I felt a different kind of fatigue. It was as if everything I had carried rose to the surface at once. For 54 days, I had hundreds of conversations. I listened to fears, held space for frustration, and witnessed the quiet ache of people navigating changes they didn’t fully understand. I sat with the burdens of those facing the realities of aging, asking in their own ways, What happens next?
The truth is, I don’t just do this work.
I inhabit it.
I step fully into every story, every question, every fear someone brings to me.
And for that reason, I don’t simply clock out when it’s over.
In my mind’s eye, I see the names of each person on a strip of paper swirling in the wind above me, and I ask:
Did I give my best to each person?
Was I kind, even when the pressure grew heavy?
Did I help them feel at ease?
Now, with the last 24 days of the year in front of me, a new question rises:
What is left for me to let go of?
What lives in the quiet crevices of my heart, the tucked-away places beyond my own reach, that only the Holy Spirit can touch and heal?
This is the sacred transition I feel myself entering:
from carrying others to letting God carry me,
from holding burdens to releasing my own,
from effort to surrender.
Today, I am grateful for all of it, the strain, grace, and humanity of these past 54 days. And I am listening now for what is ready to fall away so that I can step into the new year with a lighter heart, an untucked spirit, and a soul made more whole.