A Letter for the New Year
My Dearest Friend,
By the time December closes, I am tired.
Not the kind of tired that asks for reinvention or bold declarations, but the quieter kind that settles in after a year fully lived. I thought that standing still this season — staying home, pausing travel — might allow me to gather rest for what comes next. But stillness has never meant emptiness for me. Even when life slows, I find ways to fill the space, often with care for others, with hosting, with holding things together. And so I arrive here at the edge of the year tired, and honest about it.
Closing the Book
Each December, there is a ritual that makes the turning of the year feel real to me. I close the planner that carried the last twelve months — every appointment rewritten so it would not be forgotten, every obligation given weight in ink — and I tuck it away. Then I open the new one. It is not empty. A few dates are already written in. But most of its pages remain open, waiting.
I have always loved that moment. One year held firmly in my hands, and another offered with space to breathe. It reminds me that preparation does not erase uncertainty. It only creates room for it.
And uncertainty, as this year ends, is not abstract. It is layered and present, already pressing forward. Change is coming — movement, transition, another reshaping of what home will look like — and military life has taught me that no amount of planning removes the unknown. Every year arrives carrying something new, whether we feel ready or not.
There has never been a year that arrived empty. Each one has brought wonder, strain, joy, growth, and change in its own way. This one will too.
As I close this year, I am reminded that living well has never depended on having everything decided in advance. It has depended on presence — on staying with the life in front of us, even when we are tired. On choosing each other, again and again, as the ground shifts beneath our feet. On noticing the quiet sacrifices that rarely announce themselves, especially the ones our children learn to carry with such grace.
The Lesson
A new year does not ask us for certainty. It asks us for honesty.
There is wisdom in preparation, and there is wisdom in leaving space. Living well is not about choosing one over the other, but about learning how to hold both at the same time — to plan without trying to control, to hope without demanding guarantees. That balance, imperfect and unfinished, is often where grace takes root.
To the Spouse Who Is Stepping Into a New Year
If you are beginning this year without everything mapped out — without a resolution, a word, or a clear sense of what you want it to become — you are not behind. You are simply human, standing at the edge of what has not yet been lived.
You can move forward with intention even if parts of the path remain unclear. You can allow joy to exist alongside uncertainty, without needing one to resolve the other. Living well has never required certainty — only presence.
On New Year’s Eve, after the house grows quiet and the children are asleep, there is often a moment where we simply breathe out. Not because the year was easy — it was not — but because it was lived honestly. Fully. Together.
Tomorrow, the year will begin whether we feel ready or not. Life will keep moving forward, as it always does. But tonight, we rest. We pause. We turn the page with open hands.
