How Much Can Really Change in a Year?

Brief thoughts on celebrating change + accepting life's ebbs and flows

Amid last year’s chaos, during one of many, many conversations reckoning with all of our personal and shared conflicts, J looked at me and said, “We could be in a completely different place next year.”

Almost everything that could be heavy was and we were both stumbling about, trying to find a way out or through or over, all of which seemed impossible, elusive. He said it and we both hoped for it—that everything would be different for the better in a year—but we barely even knew how to imagine it.

Over the past few months, I’ve caught myself in pockets of awe at how much truly has changed since then. Almost everything is different for both of us. So much we were rattled and crushed by last year has lifted and settled into something lighter, something sweet again.

Turns out pretty much everything can change in a year.

Last year, the thought was a comfort: it could be better, easier, different in a year. This year, in the season of that “better” life, the thought of everything changing in yet another year scares me. Because life currently feels peaceful and aligned, change looms like a threat. What if it gets bad again? Worse? Hard again? It scares me to confront this possibility yet I find I cannot outrun it. I also find that such change is only natural—pendulum swing, change of the tides, turn of the seasons. Nothing stays the same forever, not the good and not the bad.

It is also possible that everything could change once again but do so toward an even better better. Just like last year, it is only my imagination that is limited.

As this year draws to a close, I am working on releasing my need to know and my desire to control the outcome. I want to settle into the natural ebb and flow of life instead. I have had seasons of plenty and seasons of famine. More of both will come. My posture and my response are all that I can control, and I wish to move through whatever may come with ease.