The newness of a fresh year is fizzling and losing its spark. I’m sitting at my writing station (code for: dining room table) and trying not to think too much.
I have therapy in an hour with the same woman I’ve been seeing for almost two years now. She’ll sit with me and work my brain, asking questions I don’t know how to ask myself and helping me find answers for things that I don’t have names for. I’m usually exhausted afterwards.
It’s 2023 and I'm feeling the familiar restlessness that comes when I’m presented with a un-lived batch of 365 days. I’m always glad to leave the obligatory weight of the holidays behind for the clean calendar slate of a new year, but looking at how to fill it up makes me tired.
I look back on everything we didn’t get to change last year: we’re still in this old house, we still haven’t found a community of people we feel safe in, we don’t have a home church, I didn’t get to bring in even close to the amount of income I wanted to contribute to our family.
I feel deflated. And if I'm not careful, I can get stuck feeling that way.
Lord, help me to define success or progress how You define it. May my heart align with Yours even when nothing aligns how I hoped it would. Especially then.
It snowed again last night. We woke up to a powdered sugar landscape and milky skies. February is here and with it some of my winter grit is starting to ebb away.