White Christmas, Stormy New Year
“Every tomorrow is another opportunity.”
You’ll find this quote often in my content. It’s from my book, Every Beaten Path, and it has become a bit of a mantra in my life. We all love new beginnings. We make resolutions at the end of December and excitedly power through the first three weeks of January. But we often lose momentum and fall back on old habits at the first sign of weakness or that dreaded word “failure.”
I feel like this is our cycle as humans and also the permission we give ourselves to give up, to stop trying, and then wallow in our lack of success.
When I was a little girl, growing up in an industrial city near Richmond, Virginia, I lived for winter, especially Christmas. It was my mother’s favorite holiday and she managed to instill her child-like excitement in me for all things Santa Claus, reindeer, mistletoe, and most of all… SNOW!
I remember white Christmases as a child, not many, but far more than I’ve seen as an adult. Maybe it’s climate change, maybe a cyclical earth, maybe both, but for those of us in The South, seeing the blankety white stuff at Christmas is a fairytale.
So 2022 goes down in my little book of history as a big deal at Christmastime. We actually got snow here in Tennessee and the farm glistened with a magical glow of childhood. My ten-year-old son had never seen a white Christmas until now, and though the world is vastly different than what it was when I was his age, for a few days I felt like I was back in that safe space of wonder and curiosity my mother fostered all those years ago.
When the snow melted and the new year dawned, bringing with it rain and lightning, even hail and tornadoes in some areas, I felt a sense of loss, another year gone and the start of something new I wasn’t quite ready for.
There is excitement in new things, but also anxiety and pressure to get it right. Maybe the metaphor of a perfect white Christmas and a stormy New Year’s week is the perfect way to describe our journeys on this earth, the highs and lows of expectations met and lost. Is this why we often buckle at the first sign of “failure”?
This is my first blog post on this website and my first blog post in many years on any site. I’m trying new things, trying to work harder at building and cultivating the community I’ve started. I’ve never tried anything that didn’t flop in at least some way at some time. I’m the kind of person who gets discouraged easily when things don’t go as planned (though I’ve come a long way!). Perfectionist much? YES! Still working on that one.
My goal with this blog is to journal my life, my journey, successes, failures, lessons learned, friends made, and all the little things we often don’t see around us. I hope to update it regularly. I hope you will read it and share it. I hope you will leave comments and ask questions.
Most of all, I hope you will share your journey with me and we can grow together. I wish you blessings and love in 2023. May your goals and endeavors be paved with light and beauty. May you learn more this year than you did last year. And may your days be filled with wonder and curiosity for the world and the people around you.
My perfect December turned into a turbulent January, but that is not necessarily a bad thing! What I have learned most in my life is that as long as we are here on this earth there is still time and opportunity to do more and make change. Don’t wait until January to set resolutions or Mondays to start better habits. If you lay your head down at night wishing you had done something differently, remember that “Every tomorrow is another opportunity.” Make the most of it. Every morning that we wake up we have another opportunity to improve from the day before. When I think of it this way, there isn’t much room for discouragement. Perhaps daily resolutions should be a thing!
I’m thankful for Jess’s wisdom in Every Beaten Path. She taught me what I struggled to realize on my own, that every single day is a gift, every hour, every minute, and how we use these continuous opportunities is up to us.
Thank you for reading to the end. Thank you for sharing this journey. Love and blessings to you all, my friends. Happy 2023 and a bright and blessed today and tomorrow for us all!
Sarah