Starting the Year with Open Hands, Not a Perfect Plan

If I’m honest, the New Year usually starts with a pause for me.

Not excitement. Not dread. Just a pause.

The calendar flips, people start talking about goals and words for the year, and I find myself sitting with my coffee thinking, I don’t actually know what I want this year to be yet.

My planner is already filling up. Practices, appointments, work deadlines — things that won’t move no matter how nicely I ask them to. So while January is supposed to feel like a clean slate, it already looks… lived in.

And maybe that’s the part we don’t talk about enough.

A new year doesn’t start from nothing. It starts from wherever we already are. From full schedules and tired bodies and lives that don’t pause just because the date changed.

That’s probably why I’ve never loved the pressure of New Year’s resolutions. I don’t mind dreaming. I don’t mind hoping. But I don’t love pretending that I can map out an entire year from one quiet week in January.

Life doesn’t really work like that.

Some years are for building. Some are for maintaining. And some are for falling — and standing back up slower than you planned.

And you don’t always know which kind you’re stepping into.

So instead of trying to decide who I want to become by December, I’m starting the year with open hands.

Not empty hands. Just open ones.

Because my hands are already full. Full of responsibility and people and callings I care deeply about. Some days they feel overflowing — with good things, hard things, and everything in between.

Open hands don’t mean letting go of what matters. They mean knowing when to stop gripping so tightly — and when to ask for help carrying what was never meant to be held alone.

Maybe the gift of a new year isn’t a blank page waiting to be filled. Maybe it’s the grace to begin with what we’re already carrying — and the freedom to hold it without fear.

To walk into the unknown without rushing to define it.

And to walk into it the way I always have — talking to God, asking for help, and trusting Him with what I can’t carry on my own.

And if you’re feeling this way too, you’re not alone. The New Year isn’t a magical flip of a switch or a clean slate that erases what we’re already carrying. It’s just a day on the calendar. Setting goals isn’t the problem — the problem is believing we have to change everything at once, or carry it all on our own. Faith was never meant to look like white-knuckling our way into a better version of ourselves. It looks more like walking forward honestly, asking for help, and trusting God to carry what we can’t. So if you’re starting this year without a perfect plan, with full hands and a tired heart — welcome. There’s room here