So much for a strong start...
Happy New Year from my couch. 🤧
Most of us would agree that the New Year lands in your lap with a heavy load of expectations. The clock strikes midnight and we raise a glass to all the glorious possibilities. Or maybe we didn’t make it past 11:15 🙋🏻♀️.
Come January 1st, we wake up, wash our faces, shuffle to the coffee pot, and find ourselves reflective…glancing back at all the areas where commitments fell off the rails; ready and eager for a fresh start. January swoops in and slaps its sticky note in the middle of our forehead: ”2026! Here’s your list!”
Oh, and like so many others, I have a long list of categories—
Relationships
Health
Spiritual/Emotional
Vocational
Reformation (yes, I really have this one—where can I bring reform on my small square of Chester County?)
Creativity
Technology
“Bucket List”
Marriage
What’s more, this long list has sub-points! 😬🙄 And I’m not even a Type-A; I’m an A-B-C-D-A-S-L-R-whatever wave comes-type!
Every year I try to be realistic. That’s what they say you should do. Keep it manageable. But, my friends, it all went to hell when two days into 2026 I woke up with Covid. Achy, chills, weak…and headaches that took me to the edge of sanity. I washed up on the shore of 2026 as I watched the New Year’s Party Cruise sail into the sunset without me. I literally lost a full week of my life. So much for manageable goals. I was lucky to stay awake.
Frederick Buechner had my full attention when I read this on January 1, 2026:
If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.
This is not the first time I have read these words from him, “Listen to You Life.” Over the past year, this way of being attentive to myself—my fears, hurts, insecurities, and all the string of events and patterns—keeps me curious. God is inviting me to co-author a story. It’s a skill set to be still enough and attentive enough to actually notice what our lives are revealing. I find it backfires when I ignore my life and distract myself into a robot-like existence. Listening to your life is not magic, but it is mysterious. It’s not palm reading; but it is a kind of revelation that forms a narrative in the sentences, paragraphs, and chapters of our normal work-a-day lives. As Dan Allender puts it in his book, To Be Told, “A life that is familiar with its story reveals much about the character of God” (22).
What is the parable Jesus would tell about my waste-of-a-week start to 2026?
Today is the first day I don’t have a crippling headache, so I sat with myself to give a little listen. What typically happens in this stream of consciousness dump, journaling whatever comes to mind, I find myself sharing it with God. And without hesitation, he welcomes my washed-up self. Like an archeological dig, I dust off something noteworthy, and I ask myself the question: “What is the secret message hidden here in this utter lack of accomplishment, this primal state of merely eating and sleeping, this not-one-goal-visited much less met?? When everyone else is up early, rushing out the door to change the world and make millions, I am at the mercy of my husband to fix me a meal. When the only thing on my list is a record of when I last took my migraine pill. What is my life telling me?”
What is God saying about himself?
Don’t you think one of the hardest lessons for us humans to learn is that we are not the engine? We think it is all up to us, and unfortunately we are teaching the generations behind us that it is all up to them. YOU and YOUR hard work will generate the accomplishment and success you achieve. If something isn’t working, I am a failure; if something is wildly successful, I must be the reason. It’s not new, this was the very first temptation—”You can be like God…” And, though subtle, it is the ongoing temptation underneath every other pull we feel.
So this year, when the starter pistol went off and everyone was running into 2026 with a new set of habits, and a brand new hope for good things to come, I was asleep.
I know others who started 2026 grieving tragic losses. I know some who are unemployed, others who feel alone. There’s a group of us washed up on the shore, watching the days go by with little to show for it.
One of my favorite stories in the Old Testament is in Genesis 15 when God established his Covenant with Abraham. The father of many nations showed up for the process and, like that, fell asleep. Moses records the scenario, “As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him…”
Moses continues, “Then the Lord said to him, ‘Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age…[What do you think, Abraham, are you in?]”’”
Abraham: 😴
God went on to establish his Covenant while Abraham slept. And, not only that, God sustained the Covenant while Abraham made terrible decisions. God did it. He is the author and perfecter…
“Apart from me, you can do nothing,” Jesus said to his disciples. Yep, I see that to be quite true in my life.
As I sat quietly, the rain falling outside the window, the quiet, like a curtain drawing back space for me to listen to my life, this is what I heard:
“Dawn, Welcome to 2026. I am the Beginning and the End. In me all things exist and all things hold together. Apart from me this year, like every other year, you can do nothing. What is impossible with you, is possible with me. Like Mary who chose to sit at my feet, your first posture is to receive ME, receive my grace, receive my strength, receive my companionship and the path I have for you in 2026. When you are sick and when you are well, RECEIVE ME. Don’t put the pressure on yourself to make this year be something spectacular; it isn’t yours to bear. And you don’t actually know what you need. I didn’t come to be born a human, die a human death, and resurrect so that I could hand it all over to you. I am your Shepherd. I am with you wherever you go. Oh, you participate; you are active and fully engaged in all I have for you, but you, my friend, are not the engine. Losing the first week of January on your fresh new calendar is not actually a problem, so don’t misread it as one. And you will have many more days like this week, and you will have many failures and mess-ups, and nothing will hinder my call on your life. And when you remember Scott serving you meal after meal on the couch, don’t miss the hidden message of this metaphor I wrote into the story.”
“In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness…Listen to your life…”
Pure goodness.
Hmmmm, I guess that’s a pretty good start. Happy New Year, everyone.
Dawn is a counselor and coach. She feels called especially to help people listen to their lives, to know, deep in their bones, the love and mercy of God, and to walk with them through the thorn-thick path to find Him. Reach out for a free consultation: