A new year begins here. While boys sleep and the light rises outside, blue gray winter skies promise another year. Routine is adjusted with a later alarm but it is all the same. Cereal, eggs, coffee, quiet.

365 days stretch before me, all named by 2016. Some of them have already been claimed. Work trips. Wrapping up. Saying goodbye. Moving. Kindergarten. Beginning again. Birthdays. Anniversaries.

Many are left untouched, awaiting life to fill them and grant them their greatest desire – purpose.

With this year of change ahead of us, I know sadness will creep in. I know mourning will enter, with loneliness bringing its thick and heavy cloak. Fear will reign on days, seeking to take possession of all the days to follow.

Even so, I cling to the rising light amidst the darkness.

New year with new experiences but always situated in old promises – that sadness grows the heart, mourning honors life, loneliness centers me, and fear brings me to my knees where I encounter the Holy most profoundly, in the dust and ashes.

I pause and give thanks in the early hours of the new year for the eternal gift of revelation – the divine crumb-dropping that guides my feet, sustains my soul, and keeps me rising early each morning.

For life and its endless wonders,
faith and its eternal promises,
hope and its persistent chase after me,
I pause and give thanks.

And for the 365 days now passed and filed away under 2015, may 2015’s seeds planted find blossoms in the new year. We have emerged more broken and more whole, exhausted but still determined, stuffed but eternally hungry for more.