More Presence for What’s Precious

 

As the year begins to loosen its grip and we find ourselves standing at the edge of what’s been and what’s coming, something in us naturally starts to slow down and take stock. Not in a rushed, goal-setting kind of way—but in a quieter, more honest way. The kind of looking that happens when the noise fades and the heart finally gets a word in.

For many of us, this past year has held both tenderness and trial. We’ve carried grief and grace at the same time. We’ve learned things we never asked to learn. We’ve had moments that took our breath away in wonder, and others that took our breath away in sorrow. And now, as the calendar prepares to turn, there’s a gentle invitation in the air: to look again at what truly matters, and to choose—on purpose—what receives our care.

Somewhere along the way, through survival and responsibility and simply getting through the days, it’s easy to lose touch with what our heart has always known is precious. We don’t abandon it intentionally. We simply get tired. We get busy. We do what needs to be done. And little by little, the sacred gets crowded out by the urgent.

But that knowing never really leaves us.

It waits.

Often quietly. Patiently. Until one day we feel a nudge we can’t quite ignore. A restlessness that isn’t anxiety, but longing. A soft discomfort that isn’t dissatisfaction, but truth knocking.

It sounds like this:
There’s more here for you.
There’s something you’ve been neglecting.
There’s a way of living that feels truer than the one you’ve been managing.

This is the place where presence begins again.

Not with grand declarations. Not with a long list of intentions. But with one honest question:
What is precious to me right now?

Not what should matter.
Not what once mattered.
But what your heart recognizes as tender, sacred, and worth tending in this season of your life.

For some, it’s a relationship that needs gentler attention.
For others, it’s their own body asking for rest.
For some, it’s their creativity, their prayer life, their grief, their joy, their healing.

What is precious is often very simple. And very easy to overlook.

Yet where we place our presence is where our life quietly forms.

What we give our attention to shapes what grows.
What we return to again and again becomes the story we live inside.

And presence, real presence, is not something we force.

It is something we offer. Gently. Willingly. With the understanding that our energy is not endless, and therefore it is sacred by nature.

This is what I’ve been learning again and again—that we don’t need more hustle for an abundant life. We need more honesty about what deserves the little energy we have. We need more devotion to what actually gives us life back.

As this year prepares to close, I’ve been sitting with this truth myself. Asking not what I want to accomplish next—but what I want to carry forward with care. What I want to protect from becoming collateral damage to busyness or fear or distraction.

Because the most painful losses in our lives are not always dramatic. Many of them happen quietly. They happen when we forget to tend what once made us feel alive. When we postpone what matters most until “later.” When we promise ourselves we’ll return—and then keep putting it off.

Presence is the act of returning.

Returning to what softens us.
Returning to what strengthens us.
Returning to what connects us—to ourselves, to one another, and to God.

And you don’t have to change everything to begin. You don’t have to overhaul your life or make sweeping promises you may not be able to keep. You only have to notice where your heart is leaning… and honor it with one small act of care.

One boundary.
One honest conversation.
One quiet hour reclaimed.
One moment of rest.
One brave step toward what you’ve been avoiding because it mattered too much.

The world will always compete for your attention. That will never stop. But what you choose to give your presence to—that is where your power lives.

As you stand at this threshold between what has been and what is becoming, my hope for you is simple and deep:

That you would remember what is precious to you.
That you would choose to be present with it.
And that in doing so, you would feel your life begin to breathe again.

Because what you tend with love tends to give love back.

Be Blessed,
Taylor 💛

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