Stuck in the Middle at the Beginning

I had a semi-recurring dream last night which dragged me back into a difficult period in my past. As a result, I woke up blindingly angry at a lot of people. I could not get my mind off of the hurt. Then I felt stupid for letting the past continue to wound me in this brand new year of 2026.

The calendar is something both kind and cruel. One one hand, new days and new years allow us the opportunity for fresh starts. We often need those kind of signposts to propel us forward. Yet a new year can also be intensely frustrating when you don’t feel new. Maybe you wouldn’t beat yourself up if you felt like you were stuck on some random day. But this is a brand new year so you feel like you need to get your crap together.

Maybe the best way I can get my crap together is to remember that we don’t move in the same linear fashion as the calendar. Traumas, memories, breakthroughs, and the like will sometimes make a person feel like they are making huge progress one day and fifty steps backwards the next. I confess that it sometimes makes me wonder whether I am healing or I just had a really good distraction. It is an easy way to frustrate yourself.

So I have to remind myself—in the immortal words of Jimmy Eat World (in what has become one of our family’s unofficial anthems)—it just takes some time, you’re in the middle of the ride. Even when everything on the calendar says you should be new, you are still in the middle.

I don’t know what you hope for in the new year: to find community, exercise more, read forty books, or just survive to 2027. Whatever your hope and mine, I hope that we are kind to ourselves. I was looking at the gospel lectionary passage today (John 1:1-18) and saw that it contained one of my favorite verses. In the sixteenth verse, it says that from the fullness of Jesus we receive grace upon grace. I really love that image of grace stacked one on top of another to the sky. So as we try to move forward in this new year, may we allow ourselves and one another other to experience grace. There is a lot more ride to go.