Does Your Fresh Start Need a Restart?

I’m guessing you saw them all, same as me. The blog posts, tweets and Instagram captions about the New Year and new decade—the perfect time for a fresh start with all sorts of energizing goals and inspiring aspirations.

I don’t usually pay much attention to the annual turn of the calendar, but I do get the appeal of 2020. It’s a nice, round, even number that just oozes with hope and anticipation.

Plus, last year was a hard one—for me, and perhaps for you.

I can still see the draining effects of it when I look in the mirror or glance up at the self-checkout security camera at the grocery store. I can feel the lingering weariness when I trudge up the basement steps or huff my way through another round on the treadmill.

Hard seasons take their toll, there’s no getting around it.

Maybe that’s why I was interested in doing things a little differently to start off 2020—not to keep up with all the social media influencer cheerleaders, whoever they are, but because I really wanted to.

I made a list of every piece of my life that I could think of, from prayer and church to household management and individual members of my family. My plan was to write down a sort of reflective to-do list that would help me be more intentional in each of these areas.

It was a good plan, and before 2019 ended, I actually started doing it.

I’ll spare you the rundown on everything that got in the way; let’s just say this little reflection endeavor is still a work in progress. And between snow days and holidays and our ongoing kitchen renovation, I’m still trying to gain traction on some other post-holiday projects that I wish had been completed by now.

It’s almost as if my fresh start needs a restart, if that makes any sense at all.

To frustrate matters further, I’m also finding out that while “out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new” can be helpful when it comes to calendars and fitness goals and eating plans, it doesn’t really apply to matters of the heart.

I feel like I’ve turned some good corners in the grieving process over the last few months, but you never know where the sadness is going to spring up. You never know when grief is going to sneak in among the happiness and start stealing away your sleep, make you second guess every decision you made a year ago and yes, even interfere with your ability to accomplish any or all of your January goals.

For example, if you pay attention to sports at all, you’ve probably heard that the Kansas City Chiefs are going to the Super Bowl for the first time since 1970. This is hugely exciting for those of us in “Chiefs Kingdom,” as we like to call it.

Even as we hollered and clapped and wrung our hands through some amazing playoff games, though, we couldn’t ignore the fact that my dad wasn’t there to see his favorite team achieve this goal after all those years.

It didn’t put a damper on our joy that the Chiefs had won, but it did create a little hitch in our hearts when we thought about it. And when the thrill of victory wore off, the sadness lingered for a few days, at least for me.

I think this is what I’m realizing. Just because it’s a new year, we can’t always wipe out whatever difficult season we’re in and start afresh. The stressors and aches of 2019 didn’t disappear when the ball dropped on Jan. 1. It just doesn’t work that way.

On the other hand, while those tough times may have caused us to ring in the New Year sporting a few more wrinkles or a few extra pounds, perhaps they’ve grown us in other ways too—in empathy, in compassion, in the ability to truly understand that which we could only imagine before.

So if you’re not quite smashing all your goals in 2020—if you actually feel like you might be losing momentum instead of gaining it—give yourself a little grace.

Life is lived one task at time, one prayer at a time, one bit of growth at a time.

Your fresh start doesn’t need a restart. You just need to keep going.

♥ Lois

Finally, I’m linking up this week with Purposeful Faith, #TellHisStory, InstaEncouragements, Recharge Wednesday, Let’s Have Coffee and Grace & Truth.

“2020” photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash