I’ve been doing my best to make friends with January.

New starts and new charts and a new me–I’ve never been good at channeling that into one month. I do evaluate my life and move toward change, but I’m more successful if I don’t try to alter too many things at one time.

And January memories are hard. So many cold and harsh moments in that January three years ago. A battle so intense that we didn’t fully realize that our sweet girl was slipping away.

Memory flares into emotion that I cannot will away.

But I can speak truth into it.

The burdens of the year are already heavy–so many battles to bring before the Lord each day. I sympathize more now with the weight of suffering and try to help bear the burdens of others in prayer. I have found the best way to relieve the heaviness in my own heart is to pray truth back to God, to recount to Him what He is like and what He has promised. To sit still with the enormity of who He is.

And that’s what we can do with the new year in front of us. Speak truth to our fear, to our heartache, to our expectations.

Move toward right thinking and right doing.

Be patient. Be grateful for mercy. Be confident in hope.

Cling to the One who planned and knows and is present in every tomorrow.

The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the LORD. Lamentations 3:25-26