Year-End Reflection: Celebrating Your Creative Progress
As we stand at the threshold of a new year, there’s a cultural pressure to measure our worth by what we’ve achieved. Did you hit your goals? Did you reach that milestone? Did you accomplish everything you set out to do?
But what if we asked different questions?
What if, instead of measuring achievement, we celebrated progress? What if we looked back not with a checklist of completed goals, but with eyes opened to see how God has faithfully guided us through terrain we couldn’t see clearly at the start?
This isn’t about lowering standards or giving ourselves participation trophies. This is about recognizing a profound truth: the journey itself is sacred, and progress matters more than we realize.
When Achievement Isn’t The Point
I’ll be honest with you—I’m not where I thought I’d be at the end of 2025.
When I set my creative business goals at the start of this year, I had specific metrics in mind. Subscriber counts. Revenue targets. Launch timelines. All those tangible markers that prove you’re “making it” as a creative entrepreneur. And by those standards? I haven’t “arrived.”
But here’s what I have done this year: I published three books. I launched Soft Sacred Slow on Substack. I found genuine clarity in my voice and message. I built a community of creative women seeking the same soft, sacred, slow approach to life and ministry.
Looking at that reality, I realize something profound: this journey has been far more rewarding than hitting any single milestone would have been. The arbitrary achievement goals I set? They were just numbers. But the actual progress I’ve made? That’s transformation.
I’ve learned what my message truly is. I’ve discovered who I’m called to serve. I’ve found my voice—not the voice I thought I should have, but the authentic one that flows from who God made me to be. That’s not “settling.” That’s sacred progress.
Our God Who Invites Us To Remember
The psalmist wrote with urgency in his voice: “I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will consider all your works and meditate on all your mighty deeds” (Psalm 77:11-12). There’s something powerful in that repetition—”I will remember... yes, I will remember.” It’s as if he’s reminding himself that this practice of looking back matters deeply.
Throughout Scripture, we see this pattern again and again. God tells His people to “remember the wonders He has done, His miracles, and the judgments He pronounced” (Psalm 105:5). He instructs them to “be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live” (Deuteronomy 4:9).
The Israelites built altars. They established feasts. They told stories around fires and dinner tables. Not because they were dwelling in the past, but because remembering God’s faithfulness in the journey prepares us to trust Him in what’s ahead.
When we look back at our creative journey—not with a productivity audit but with a heart of remembrance—we aren’t being self-indulgent. We’re practicing a biblical discipline. We’re saying: “God, show me where You were at work when I couldn’t see the full picture. Help me recognize Your hand guiding me even through the detours and delays.”
Reimagining Progress Over Achievement
Here’s the difference between achievement and progress: Achievement is reaching a destination. It’s binary—you either made it, or you didn’t. Progress is movement. It’s about the direction you’re heading and the person you’re becoming along the way.
Achievement asks: “Did you arrive?” Progress asks: “How far have you come? What have you learned? How have you grown?”
In creative work, progress might look like finally understanding your unique voice after years of trying to sound like someone else. It might be publishing one book instead of ten, but it’s the book you were meant to write. Progress shows up when you’ve built a small community of deeply engaged readers rather than a massive audience of passive followers, or when you’ve learned to say no to opportunities that don’t align with your values.
Sometimes progress is developing systems that honor your neurodivergent brain instead of fighting against it. It’s choosing rest without guilt. It’s creating from overflow instead of depletion. None of these fit neatly into a year-end achievement list, but every single one represents profound progress in becoming who God created you to be.
The Light God Provides Along The Path
When God said, “Let there be light” on the first day of creation, He wasn’t just creating the sun and stars. He was establishing the principle that light reveals what is hidden. Light shows us where we are. It illuminates the path ahead. It helps us see clearly what we couldn’t perceive in the darkness.
But here’s something I’m learning: God doesn’t always give us light for the entire journey at once. He gives us light for the next step. Then the next. Then the next.
Think about the Israelites following the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. They couldn’t see the entire route to the Promised Land mapped out before them. They could only see where God was leading them right now. And that’s often how our creative journeys work, too.
At the start of 2025, you might have thought you knew exactly where you were going. You had a plan. A vision. Maybe even a detailed roadmap. But then life happened. God redirected. Circumstances shifted. And the path you actually walked looked nothing like the one you sketched out in January.
That doesn’t mean you got lost. It means God was guiding you through territory you didn’t know you needed to traverse. And now, looking back, you can see the light He provided for each step—even when you couldn’t see the destination.
This is the work of The Light Garden: not just seeing where we’re going, but recognizing where God has been illuminating our path all along. When we reflect with this perspective, we’re not measuring failure against a plan. We’re discovering faithfulness we didn’t recognize in the moment.
What Progress Actually Looks Like
Progress in creative work is rarely linear, and it almost never looks like we think it will. We set goals for book launches and business growth, but God might be working on our character and our calling instead. We aim for visibility and influence, but He’s cultivating depth and authenticity in us.
Sometimes progress is internal before it’s ever external. It’s the mental shift that happens when you finally stop trying to be someone else and embrace who God made you to be. It’s the moment you realize your creative work doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s to be valuable and meaningful.
Progress might be the hard conversation you finally had about boundaries. It might be the opportunity you turned down because it didn’t align with your values, even though it looked impressive on paper. It might be the system you implemented that honors your neurodivergent brain instead of forcing yourself into productivity methods designed for someone else’s mind.
For one creative, progress might look like publishing consistently for the first time ever. For another, it might be learning to take breaks without guilt. For someone else, it could be finding their authentic voice after years of mimicking others. For you, it might be something entirely different—something that doesn’t show up on social media metrics or income reports, but that represents genuine transformation in how you live and create.
What if the goals you didn’t hit were never meant to be your destination? What if they were signposts pointing you toward something deeper, something more aligned with who God is shaping you to become?
A Framework For Sacred Reflection
Reflection isn’t just about looking back—it’s about seeing clearly. It’s about asking God to show us what we couldn’t see while we were in the thick of the journey. David prayed, “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24). That’s the posture we bring to this reflection: open hands, asking God to reveal what matters.
As you reflect on your creative journey this year, I want to offer you some questions to consider. You can ponder them as you read, or if you want to go deeper, grab your journal and spend some time with them. These aren’t meant to be another performance evaluation—they’re invitations to notice God’s faithfulness.
On Vision and Calling
Where did you gain clarity this year that you didn’t have before? Maybe you don’t have all the answers yet, but what do you understand about your calling or your creative voice now that was foggy at the start of the year? Even small shifts in understanding are progress worth celebrating.
Think about the moments when you felt most aligned with your purpose. What were you doing? Who were you serving? What did that teach you about the direction God is leading you? Sometimes our most meaningful work happens in the margins of what we thought our “real” work was supposed to be.
On Growth and Transformation
Who are you becoming through this creative journey? Not who you wish you were or who you think you should be, but who you actually are now compared to a year ago. What has changed in how you think about your work, your worth, or your calling?
Consider the struggles you faced this year. What did they teach you? Where did you see God’s provision in the midst of difficulty? Sometimes our greatest progress happens not in spite of our challenges, but because of them. God often does His deepest work when we’re in terrain we never wanted to walk through.
On Relationships and Community
How have your creative relationships shifted this year? Did you find your people—even if it’s just one or two kindred spirits who truly understand your calling? Did you learn to set boundaries with people who drain your creative energy? Did you discover that you don’t have to do this alone?
The creative life can be isolating, but it’s not meant to be lived in isolation. Progress sometimes looks like finally asking for help, or finding a community that celebrates you instead of competing with you, or learning that collaboration can be more fulfilling than comparison.
On Systems and Sustainability
What did you learn about working with your design instead of against it? Maybe you didn’t build the perfect productivity system, but did you discover one practice that actually helps you show up consistently? Did you implement one boundary that protects your creative energy?
Progress in this area is often invisible to others. It’s the morning routine that grounds you before you create. It’s the weekly planning practice that reduces your overwhelm. It’s the decision to batch content instead of scrambling daily. These aren’t impressive achievements to post about, but they’re the infrastructure that makes sustainable creativity possible.
On Output and Creation
What did you actually create this year? Not what you planned to create or what you wish you had created, but what you actually made and put into the world. Did you write one chapter or one blog post? Did you publish one video or host one event? Did you show up for your craft even when it felt small?
Here’s the truth: You created more than you think you did. When we focus on what we didn’t finish, we discount everything we did produce. But every word written, every image shared, every conversation sparked—it all counts. Your creative work doesn’t have to be perfect or complete to be valuable.
How Different Personalities Approach Reflection
One of the beautiful things about being part of the body of Christ is that we’re all designed differently. And that means we each reflect and process differently, too. There’s no “right” way to do this work of looking back—there’s only your way, the way that honors how God made you.
If you tend toward direct, decisive action in your personality, you might approach this reflection wanting concrete takeaways and clear next steps. That’s completely natural. As you think through these questions, you might find yourself identifying specific changes to make or decisions to implement. That’s progress too—not just seeing where you’ve been, but knowing with clarity what to do with what you’ve learned. Just be careful not to rush past the celebration in your eagerness to improve. Give yourself permission to sit with what went well before you jump to what’s next.
If you’re more relational and people-focused in your approach, you might find yourself reflecting on this year through the lens of connections and community. You’re probably noticing how your creative work has impacted others, and you’re drawing energy from remembering the conversations and relationships that developed. Your reflection might naturally include reaching out to people who mattered to your journey this year. That’s beautiful—just make sure you also take time to honor your own growth, not just how you’ve served others.
If you tend toward steady, supportive patterns in how you work, this reflection might feel overwhelming at first. You might be thinking about all the ways you didn’t show up the way you wanted to, or all the people you feel like you let down. Sweet friend, progress for you might look like finally putting your own creative needs on par with everyone else’s. It might be that you learned to say no, or that you created without immediately giving it all away, or that you honored your need for rest. That matters deeply.
If you naturally lean toward careful, detailed analysis, you might already be mentally cataloging everything about this year—the good, the challenging, the opportunities missed, the lessons learned. You’re probably seeing patterns and making connections that others miss. That’s a gift. But be gentle with yourself as you reflect. Your high standards are part of what makes your work excellent, but they can also make you discount real progress because it doesn’t meet your internal ideal. What would it look like to celebrate what is, not just what could have been?
However you approach reflection, remember: the goal isn’t to generate action items or fix everything that feels incomplete. The goal is simply to see—to notice where God was at work, where you grew, where progress happened even when it didn’t look like you expected.
The Sacred Practice of Celebrating Progress
The writer of Lamentations reminds us: “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23). Every morning, new compassion. Every day, faithful presence. Every step of your creative journey this year, God was there.
Celebrating progress isn’t about bragging or even about feeling proud of ourselves. It’s about acknowledging that God has been faithful to bring us through. It’s about saying, “I’m not where I was, and that matters.”
Maybe you need to hear this: the fact that you’re still creating matters. In a world that often doesn’t understand or value creative work, in a culture that demands constant productivity and visible results, in circumstances that might not have been ideal—you showed up for your calling anyway. That’s not small. That’s faithfulness.
The distance between where you were and where you are now is sacred ground. It’s the space where God met you, taught you, shaped you, and moved you forward—even when forward looked different from what you expected. Don’t let the goals you didn’t reach steal the joy of recognizing the ground you actually covered.
Looking Back to See Forward
As we close out this year, I want to invite you into a simple practice: write down three specific ways you grew or progressed in your creative journey this year. Not three achievements or three completed goals—three ways you changed, learned, or moved forward. These might be internal shifts that no one else would notice. They might be small practices that became habits. They might be mindset changes that transformed how you approach your work.
Write them down somewhere you’ll see them. Not as pressure for next year, but as a reminder that growth is happening even when it’s hard to measure. As a testimony that God has been faithful to your creative calling. As evidence that progress matters more than perfection.
The Light Garden is where we discover God’s vision for our creative work. But sometimes we can only see that vision clearly when we look back at the path He’s illuminated behind us. Every step you took this year—even the ones that felt like detours—was leading you somewhere. God knew the full path even when you could only see the next step.
And as we prepare to step into a new year, we carry this truth with us: the God who guided us through every twist and turn of this year will be faithful to illuminate the path ahead. We don’t need to see the whole journey. We just need to trust the One who holds the light.
So celebrate your progress, dear creative. Honor how far you’ve come. Give thanks for God’s faithfulness. And step into what’s ahead knowing that the same God who brought you through this year will meet you in the next.
What progress are you celebrating from your creative journey this year? I’d love to hear about it in the comments. Your story might be exactly what another creative needs to hear today.
Connect & Support
🌱 Join Our Community: Subscribe to receive The Sunday Sabbath newsletter and follow along on this soft, sacred, slow journey.
🤍 Support This Ministry:
Monthly Support: Join the Cultivator’s Circle to sustain this digital ministry with a monthly contribution.
One-Time Gift: Prefer a one-time donation? You can nurture this garden with a single contribution.
📚 Explore Resources: Discover books, assessments, and resources to support your creative journey in the Salty Page Books shop.
💬 Share Your Thoughts: I’d love to hear your perspective in the comments below.