A New Year || A New Beginning

I can’t believe that we are already into a new year! Let alone coming to the end of the first week of the new year! Where on earth has 2018 gone! Man, that went fast!

I like fresh starts. A new week, new month, new year. There is something refreshing about a “fresh start.” We plan and prep what we want to accomplish. Where we want to travel. We jot down new hopes and dreams and crack open a clean fresh new planner.

I know for me, a new year is a lot of looking back at the previous year.

2018 was a big milestone year for us. It was our first year home with Tristan, which meant a lot of shifting, change, and letting go of what I always knew.

New beginnings can be wonderful, but sometimes they can be a tad painful too. Okay fine, maybe a LOT painful.

For me, 2018 was a year of letting go. Removing the old self to welcome a new self. I said goodbye to a position that I held for almost a decade. A position that had become a huge part of my identity. I also sat down my camera for a season. That too was difficult.

We often have to let go of old things, even when they feel like they are so very much ingrained into our very being, to welcome something better, bigger, and greater than we could have imagined. I still don’t know what this will look like in 2019, but I know that God isn’t finished with me yet. He has a plan that is far superior to any idea or thought I could dream up.

Isaiah 43:18-19a says it best:

Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. SEE, I am doing a [NEW THING!] Now it spring up; do you not perceive it?

Letting go of the old may bring a period of grieving. I know it did for me. But the joy and freedom that is on the other side of that is SO, SO good!

I am excited for NEW THINGS. Excited to see how God uses this blog, how He uses our family as we see out HIS plan and not our own.

Happy New Year one week in!