New Year, Same Wonderful You

It's that time of year where everything feels new.

A brief window of time beckons us forward. Come in, it calls. Take a seat on page one.

Christmas sits behind us and the busyness of routines lies in wait. Feeds focus on reinvention and resolutions, and planners are penned with promises and baskets with purchases for a 'new' and improved self.

But like the perfectly untouched frost that coated my morning walk today, the 'new' versions of us that the new year promises remain pristine. They are 'perfect' because they're untouched.

In so many ways, I love the turning of a new year; I love our collective resetting and reflecting and the drive to change habits for the better. I love the sentiment of celebration and the way that these days play host to opportunity and hope as we think, and dream and reset. I love the moments of pause that precede the New Year, the days in-between and the feeling of new paper notebooks and a crisp calendar on the wall.

But, and more importantly, let me remind you, that while the year is new, you don't have to be.

True, there is opportunity in change. But also true is that the self you brought to 2024 was totally and wonderfully enough.

In fact, it was more than enough. You are worth celebrating.

While our calendar neatly rounds off in December, the real parts of life - the challenges and fears, the uncertainties and battles - don't follow suit; life doesn't mimic a tidy conclusion and tie up its loose ends in the wake of the new year. When I look around at those I love the most, there are years gone by that are overflowing with celebration, hand-in-hand with those that have been the hardest yet. There are years ahead that look, from this vantage point, full of so much fun and goodness and those that hold immense heaviness and challenge. Both can and always will be true, and that's ok. Life is complex, far more than a 'new year, new me' mentality might allow, so long as we make space for both boats in the year ahead.

There is a freedom to be found in the releasing the pressure to throw out the old versions of yourself with last year's diary. We might love an empty page, but there is also something to celebrate in the ripped, torn, scribble covered pages of what's gone before - the messy, beautiful stories already written.

I think empty pages are often appealing because they haven't had the opportunity for things to go wrong, for failure or for challenge. They hold all the hope of ambition without carrying the efforts and challenges of the journey. That isn't to say we shouldn't dream of growth, but let's also champion the selves who've got this far, the selves who have faced the harder days and are still marching on.

For me, I bought a beautiful new plant over the holidays and it now hangs on my bookshelf. I love how its leaves hug the shelves. It's new, but it's not really. It's new to me and yet to get to this moment, it's probably been growing for years, watered by others, bathed in sunlight. And now, it's mine to enjoy.

This morning the sun filled its crevices and it got me thinking. For me, 2024 saw more change than I thought possible. A new city, new job, new flat, new church. It's been a beautiful, breakthrough ride! I hope that this year, this little plant, through the seasons, and every bright and rainy day, reminds me of truths far deeper than those of a new year.

That beautiful things don't have to be perfect, that they grow slowly, and of the joy of being planted in the right place.

So if you break your resolution on the 2nd, or feel overwhelmed by the 3rd.

If the 4th feels tough, or by the 5th this year feels a little like the last.

Then, please, hold tight to the truth that while the year might be new, you don't have to be.

In fact, the version of you who showed up to 2024 - the imperfect, beautiful, still-growing version of you - was, and always will be, beautifully and completely enough.

Ephesians 2 : 10