4th quarter

“2026 is yours”

is what I felt at the beginning of the year. It didn’t start feeling like it until the middle of the 3rd quarter (about mid-July). I was devastated as months had come and gone and things seemed to progressively wax and wane. What happened?

I expected the “bombs to burst in-air” apparently, and I guess you rarely ever emerge from an assassination attempt looking like the Empress of Rome lol.

A year is not one month in and of itself; it’s not even a collection of months where you decide if they were good or bad: A year is what you make of it.

In this last cycle of 12 months in my life August 28, 2025-today, I understand this as it relates to how we approach our lives: it’s not about what happens to you, it’s how you conceptualize it, metabolize it, and use it to fuel the next cycle of your life.

So, now, as we enter Quarter 4: October-November-December, I am compelled to reflect on how I navigated Q4 of 2025 and share what I hope to be some valuable insight for you as you embark on your 4th quarter.

If you’re new here, 1st &Lynn’s name comes from many things, but one of its references is football. Not here to argue who the greats are, but good ol’ Tom Brady is undeniable in the 4th quarter, and you should be too. What I love about life, like football, is that you don’t have to score on every possession, you just have to move ahead enough to move the chains; however, in the 4th quarter forward movement is not sufficient enough—

You must score, outpace your opponent, and by the time the clock winds to 00:00 you must win.

You do not win the game without maintaining a solid defense and playing aggressively on offense to finish. While I pray we do not have to end our year with a Hail Mary, I am confident that God’s children will win. So, think of it: do you want to have a close finish or a landslide win? How you play—how you aggressively attack your goals, address your fears, confront your past, build your intelligences, and protect what’s of value—matters, so act like it.

Last year’s 2nd half, the opposition was sure to defeat me after being crushed in the first half:

Mid July, small slights of hostility and microagressions began as I began my transition back to work in August 2025. By August’s end, I’d decided to separate from my husband after 4 years of marriage. Simultaneously, I began trying to manage my response to my life’s transitions by relying on other relationships. I now know that God was dethroning idols for me. I’ve always relied heavily on people to help me lighten life’s load. I know that’s not an unfamiliar concept to social people. Different for me, however, is my unwillingness to release people. That unwillingness was because I continued to assign my emotional heavy lifting to those around me.

YOU need to accept that in order to grow, You Cannot outsource the hardwork.

Finally, I was deciding my life’s fate and this time it was independent of other people. I had to learn to walk alone and it was the best lesson of my life. See, I ended 2025 with a Hail Mary, this year, I am much more confident of victory.

If I could give you any advice?

Close out the year. That’s it. No, I’m talking do it now. Start next year with the mentality that you are a sentient body still here in the present time and committed to seeing the year to its end, but you should be in the future. Next game, running new plays, trying new strategies. January is the perfect time for silence and to watch film and draft, so imagine this 4th quarter as a January of sorts. You should be smashing these last 3 months—end the cycle of dependency, part ways from the relationships that keep you small, follow the dream, start the task. I don’t care how 2026 started or how it’s going, how do you want it to end?

Because I used October 2025 to start a totally different game, it helped me power through 2025 with confidence. I left the year with virtually nothing—90% of my friendships done, marriage failed, quit my job, my family was falling apart, and recovering from the psychological terror of involuntary hospitalization—yet I had everything: perspective. “Virtually Nothing” was a fresh start that I didn’t realize was such, so I ran it how I imagined I would have had I got another chance.

Sometimes what you see as failure is You living in the middle of Your 2nd chance. Capitalize. do what you said you were going to do.

Let me tell you something. 4th quarter energy is infectious. Football is my favorite sport, but the 4th quarter of a basketball game is absolutely incredible. I remember April 13th’s game of 2016 like it was yesterday. Goodness, 2016 really was the end of the world lol. Anyway, Kobe dropped 23 points in the 4th quarter of his final game of his career. Some people drop that in an entire game. 37 years old and at the very end of his lifeline as an NBA player. 23 points. The number of the sport’s touted goat who’d only dropped 2 points in the 4th quarter of his final game.

I’d like to think Kobe smashed that game because he imagined himself as having already closed out that chapter in his life. He’d already done all the things that made him one of the greatest, there was no need to prove anything except, close it out. The game had to end in order for his new beginning to start.

I’d like to think he dominated the 4th quarter on April 13, 2025 because he knew how he planned to dominate what would ultimately be the 4th quarter of his own life thenceforth.

Kobe went on to focus on his life as a man to his family. At the end of the year he and his wife welcomed their 3rd child and within a year of his death had welcomed another baby girl, Capri. A girl dad. In 2018, he won an Academy Award and in the time following his retirement he built Granity studios, authored children’s and young adult books, and became deeply involved in youth basketball, heavily invested in his daughter, Gianna, and I believe his advocacy swung the pendulum in the right direction for women sports and women in sports. A true masterclass in how to nail the 4th quarter.

I’d also like to think that the “Mamba mentality” is the mentality of someone who, if he had not encountered the genius of Apostle Paul’s Philippians 1:6, for sure would be moved by the poetics of: I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:6

What the kids say?

“I know ball,” and I’m telling you: ball. out.

Happy 4th quarter ❤️