There is no right answer to the question of where you “should” be this December. There is only the truth of what your family needs, and the quiet courage it takes to honor that.

There are seasons in this life when miles stretch longer than we’d like—deployments, TDYs, or even the ordinary separations of being scattered far from the people who know us best. In those seasons, I’ve learned that gratitude behaves like a seed: small, intentional, sometimes planted in rocky ground.

One of the quiet gifts of this life is how often neighbors become more than acquaintances. They become the people your children run to after school, the ones who walk into your kitchen without knocking, the ones who slip into your days until you cannot imagine living without them. In a world where change is constant, neighbors have so often been the steadying presence that made each new duty station feel like home.

Before anything else, I want you to know how glad I am that you are here. Across the many seasons of this life, writing has always been the way I steady myself. Journals tucked on nightstands, scraps of words scribbled between errands, pages filled when the weight of a moment grew too heavy to hold silently—writing has been my companion for as long as I can remember.