In the spirit of the countless Best-Of lists tossed about this time of year, I decided to end this year with a rousing roundup of 2024’s Most Clicked Blog Posts on my personal blog. Self-serving? Absolutely. Interesting to readers? Hard to say. But it sounds kinda fun to me. Keep reading if you’d like. If not, go make some jalapeno poppers and watch football for a while, maybe.
According to Blogger.com stats ― which may or may not be reliable ― my most-read post of the year got 508 page views. For all I know, a bunch of those could be the same person clicking multiple times because they kept falling asleep midway through.
The same statistics, by the way, tell me my blog has generated more than 13,000 page views in the past year ― which is absurd ― with nearly 5,000 of those coming from Hong Kong. So, yeah, I’m taking all the numbers with a grain of salt.
(The World Wide Web says “take it with a grain of salt” stems from an old recipe for a poison antidote. It’s credited to a delightful gentleman named Pliny the Elder, a Roman naturalist from a heck of a long time ago. For those of you wondering, there was also a Pliny the Younger, who was the Elder’s nephew and probably also a lovely human.) (Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger are also beers made by the Russian River Brewing Company.) (Pliny. That’s a fun name, right there.)
Some of my better-read posts told stories of a harrowing drive in a snowstorm, a phone case’s journey from war-torn Europe, a lockdown at my son’s school, and the cat who lives around the corner. A post about heartbreak, and how that impels us to fight for a better world, seemed to strike a chord with readers who helped me mourn the kitten who lived with us only a few sad days.
A series of posts about a two-week murder trial, typed as I sat in the back of the courtroom listening to testimony, collectively generated 1,700 or so page views. Some readers followed along to learn about the grisly crimes that were the subject of the trial. Others were angry that I wrote about it, saying I was inflicting further pain on grieving families. I hope some readers came away from the posts feeling what I feel, and what drives my continuing work on my book: when we don’t try to figure out why a bad thing happened, we let it happen again.
And that’s not OK.
But my top-viewed post of the year was one of hope amid uncertainty. When my husband and I visited the Up North town where we spent a dozen happy years, we stayed at the Driftwood Motel. Memories squeezed into my tear ducts when we stepped into the room, reminding me of our first, frightened visit to the town that would become our home. I remembered, too, a time a few years later when I cleaned rooms in that motel, awaiting the new career God had in store for me.
The motel became a sort of in-between place for me, one that signified something better just over the horizon.
Sometimes, many times, we all discover ourselves in an in-between place, holding our breath and uncertain of what’s to come.
A looming decision offers a choice between known security and exhilarating possibility.
Health scares prod us to cling more fiercely to life and to loved ones.
A changing world sweeps into our family circles, challenging us to have love that’s bigger than fear.
New Year’s Eve is an in-between place. The countdown and midnight kisses and Auld Lang Syne make me mush up and cry as I bid farewell forever to the year and all its highs and lows and look ahead to who-knows-what. What best-of and worst-of moments lie ahead? Will I muck it up? Will I be the person I want to be? Will everything be OK?
I’m typing this at about 5p on December 31, 2024. It’s been a heck of a year, and I don’t know what’s coming next. But as I stand with my feet in one year and my eyes in another, hope tangoing with fear in my chest, I feel my loved ones holding one hand and my Savior holding the other. Whatever comes next, I won’t face it alone. The hurts, the joys, the highs and lows and failures and exultations, I get to share it all ― with family, with friends, with a Creator who loves me, and with a big, wide world full of people finding their own best-of moments, writing their own stories, exploring their own in-between places and discovering their own next.
Is that a point worth making? I’m not sure. I’m a little distracted by hankering for a jalapeno popper. When the clock strikes midnight in a few hours, I’ll be thinking of the people who were important to me this year, and that includes you, because you are willing to read something I wrote. Thanks for being there for me. I hope I can do the same for you.
Humans connecting with humans ― that’s what makes the world better. That’s an all-time best-of.
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Happy New Year, friends. Talk to you in 2025.
