AmeriCurious • Orthodox Year-End Check: Did We Grow Closer to God?

But Did We Actually Grow This Year?

Alright, friends, let me be real with you for a minute here. It’s December 3rd, and I’m already seeing those “2025 Year in Review” posts popping up everywhere on social media. You know the ones—people sharing their highlight reels, their achievement metrics, their follower counts going up by thousands. And I’m sitting here in my kitchen, coffee getting cold, thinking: “But did we actually grow this year? Did we get closer to the Kingdom?”

I love how Orthodox we are about this stuff, honestly. While everyone’s out here calculating their LinkedIn connections or their Instagram story views, we’re over here asking the real questions: “Father, how’s my prayer life?” “Are my kids actually learning to love the Liturgy?” “Did I Fast with integrity during Great Lent, or was I just going through the motions?”

The Achievement Metrics That Actually Matter

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not anti-social media. I post photos of our parish’s patronal feast, and yes, I even share the occasional Orthodox meme (the ones with the Byzantine icons, not the flashy graphics). But here’s what gets me: we’re letting the world’s calendar dictate our spiritual reflection instead of letting our Orthodox calendar do what it does best.

Letting Our Orthodox Calendar Do What It Does Best

Think about it. The secular New Year hits January 1st, and suddenly everyone becomes a life coach for 48 hours. But we’ve got something better—Advent. Right now, while the world is stress-shopping for Christmas, we’re in the season of preparation. The Church is literally teaching us how to prepare our hearts for Christ’s coming. Yet we’re still getting caught up in this whole “year-end reflection” social media circus.

Here’s what’s been weighing on my mind as we head into the Christmas season: What if we flipped the script entirely? What if instead of posting our “accomplishments,” we shared our expectations? Not the kind that sound impressive, but the kind that actually matter to God.

I had this conversation with my parish priest last week, and he smiled that knowing smile of his and said, “You know, St. John Chrysostom would probably be baffled by our year-end social media rituals. Not because he didn’t value reflection, but because he knew that real growth happens in the daily grind, not in the dramatic year-end summaries.”

And he’s right, isn’t it? Real Orthodox growth looks like showing up to Vespers when you’d rather stay home. It’s helping your elderly parishioner with her groceries without posting about it. It’s teaching your teenager about Saint Maria of Paris when they’d rather scroll through TikTok. It’s maintaining your prayer rule during family vacation, even when everyone else is on “holiday mode.”

Real Orthodox Growth Looks Like…

The beautiful thing about Orthodox spirituality is that it’s not about the viral moments—it’s about the persistent moments. The Tuesday morning coffee with God when nobody’s watching. The way you instinctively cross yourself when you pass a cemetery. The fact that you still say “Glory to Thee, O Lord” when you accidentally burn the koliva, even though you’re pretty sure God doesn’t care about your cooking skills.

So here’s my proposal for this Orthodox year-end: Let’s do our spiritual inventory, but let’s do it right. Instead of counting what we’ve achieved, let’s ask what we’ve learned. Not from books or podcasts or online courses, but from actually living this Orthodox life—messy, beautiful, frustrating Orthodox life.

Did we learn patience during those endless Christmas potlucks where someone always brings the dish that nobody eats? Did we learn humility when our kids asked questions about faith that stumped us? Did we learn that God’s mercy is bigger than our mistakes when we inevitably fell short of our Lenten promises again?

I think that’s the real year-end question for Orthodox Christians: Not “What did I accomplish?” but “How has God been working in my life this year?” And more importantly, “Am I paying attention?”

Let’s Do Our Spiritual Inventory Right

Because here’s the thing—while everyone’s posting their “glow-ups” and “transformations,” the real transformation is happening in the quiet moments. It’s in the way you now instinctively whisper a prayer when you see an ambulance. It’s in how your children can spot an Orthodox church from three blocks away and automatically cross themselves. It’s in the fact that your non-Orthodox friends now ask you for prayers when they’re struggling.

That’s not content for social media, friends. That’s content for eternity.

So as we move through this Advent season, let’s remember: The real year-end reflection isn’t about what’s trending on our feeds—it’s about what’s transforming in our hearts. And if we’re honest, that transformation is usually happening in ways too beautiful and too sacred for a tweet.

That’s the Orthodox way, after all. We’re not here to impress anyone. We’re here to become saints.

Lord, help us count Your mercies, not our achievements.

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Ready for the Orthodox calendar to dictate our spiritual rhythm instead of social media’s calendar.