I have never been happier to see the end of a calendar year and to welcome in a new liturgical year.
2025 has been the hardest year of this marriage. In February, after 17 years together, came a breaking point under the weight of significant accumulated and unresolved grief and heartache. Both of us had entered marriage carrying attachment and developmental trauma. Collectively, in spite of immense love and good will toward one another, our broken backstories combusted, fuelling a 17-year perfect storm.
There came a point this year when continuing to exist felt impossible, when pain bled into every aspect of life. These were the darkest nights of the soul. But as always, God pulled through, and he continues to pull this marriage through.
In spite of these difficulties, the truth remains that God knew what he was doing when he joined us in marriage. He made a perfectly imperfect match so that, in complementarity, for better and for worse, each might help the other toward heaven.
Miraculously, by the intercession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the storm began to calm and quiet this past August. With tearful and humble gladness, it can now be said that a 17-year civil war has finally ended. The battles are now external, and best of all, they are being fought together.
One of those external wars is black mould. In November it became clear that our home is in need of serious remediation. What had presented as increasingly intense and debilitating neuroimmune health issues were not only the result of chronic stress and relational trauma, but also of mycotoxin poisoning.
By mid-November, the extent of the work ahead was known. Within two weeks, everything was packed up and moved out. Another move will come just before Christmas. Our hope is that the house will be healthy enough to return to in January.
Amidst the darkness of this winter season that on top of the mould seeks to overshadow, consume, and overwhelm, consolation comes through Advent, especially through the prospect of marriage starting anew and through the fact that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph know all too well what it means to be obediently on the move and humbly waiting for God’s next beckoning amid so much uncertainty.
How many times over have I died this life, yet here I still stand and with the light of Advent hope like never before.
As St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:55, “O death, where is your sting?”
And come the day when we shall stand no more, we know that, as poet John Donne wrote, even death will die.
I can only laugh as heartily as I do with Christ because I have cried sorrowfully with him.
I close by circling back to St. Paul: “Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain” (1 Cor 15:58).
Jen Spicer lives in Mission, B.C.
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