What’s New This New Year?

“The sun came up and five years gone. Life goes on…” – Brandi Carlile

The older we get, a year becomes a smaller fraction of our life and therefore goes by faster. Or at least this seems to be the case. Brandi Carlile perfectly expresses what I’ve been feeling lately as I watch the days pass so quickly it feels like I’ve barely blinked and the weeks and months and, yes, the years zoom by. Some days I wake to feel the passage of time so intensely, it weighs heavily, and I want to drag my feet to slow the planet’s turning. I’m still doing my best to breathe into each moment, that I might not regret the passage of this time five years down the line.

At the close of each year, we engage in the collective ritual of life review. We read the lists of the top movies, people, books, and events of the past year. We resolve to kick that habit we’ve been meaning to kick for as long as we can remember.

Last year at this time, my spouse and I had learned just before Christmas that the baby I was carrying was not developing; I would miscarry soon after the New Year. I had never been so ready to let go of a year. I said goodbye to 2012 long before January 1^st and moved into 2013 with fervor. We were fortunate that a second pregnancy began a short time later and, this year, I write with a seven-week-old baby sleeping next to me. Now, I am reluctant to let go of 2013, a year that held so much grief and loss and so much joy and elation.

This year, our family is attempting a not-so-generic life review or a rote renewal of the resolutions we make each year. Instead, we are looking back on the very specific events of our year-gone-by and reflecting on what we have learned from the experiences we shared. And, knowing that our daughter will make many developmental leaps and milestones in the year ahead, my spouse and I are moving into the New Year with specific developmental goals for ourselves as individuals and as a family. As she becomes more and more herself, we ask ourselves who we want to be in the year ahead.

And you? What was new in your life in 2013? What do you let go of? What are you ready to leave behind and what do you wish to hold on to as we move into the New Year? What newness awaits you in the year ahead?

As much as I’d like to sometimes, we cannot slow the passage of time. But this liminal, in-between time here at the end of one year and the beginning of another provides us the opportunity to ask “What’s new?,” to really take stock of what has been and to turn our eyes towards what will be and who we will become in the year ahead.

Wishing you a New Year filled with blessing and beauty.