The new year used to bring me excitement, hope, and anticipation. Filling out a new calendar with birthdays and anniversaries brought the many days ahead into view. I looked forward to January 1, thinking that I could make changes, maybe start over. It looked like an opportunity for something new. I believed that if I expected a better year, it would happen.

A series of unfortunate events began to change my perspective. One New Year’s Eve, my husband’s back went out. Another New Year, I woke up with a horrific headache. When I got up to take pain reliever, I blacked out and woke up on the kitchen floor. An ambulance was called, bringing the neighbors to attention. An ambulance was called yet another New Year when one of my sons walked into the corner of a door in the dark after staying up all night and passed out. The most impactful event was the unexpected, painful death of my father on my son’s New Year’s wedding day.

Then, the approaching holiday filled me with fear. I looked ahead with an expectation of something terrible happening. I would text sons who were not home to make sure they were safe. My oldest son brought me back to reality with his gentle, matter-of-fact response. “Mom, we’re Christians. We don’t believe in that superstitious crap.”

The New Year is now two days away. I have been reading a devotional that I found at a yard sale this summer, but I awoke this morning with the thought, “It is time to start over. Start from the beginning.” So I sat with my Bible and opened it to the first page.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1

In the beginning… There was a beginning before every year began. Before the beginning, there was God. No beginning has begun without God. He will be until the last. He has been during every good beginning and every bad beginning.

I have placed too much value on a new year. In doing so, I have lost the value of many more frequent, equally valuable beginnings. Each day is a chance to begin again. Each minute is an opportunity to do something I have not done before, or do something I have done, better. I don’t want to let those opportunities get lost on a calendar of numbers. I have now, and now, God is. So, as this year rolls into the next, carrying all that it is into what is to come, I will try to embrace the value of each new opportunity to begin with the God Who created it and trust that He is folding the good and the bad into His plan for the created.