I rang in the New Year in a room full of strangers and a few old friends. I burnt the Sam’s Club frozen dumplings I made for lunch. I stretched out next to my cat in her favorite sunbeam and mumbled a fervent prayer that this year would be better than last. Then I did a paint-by-number while Taylor Swift played on a Bluetooth speaker that can’t hold a charge. I started reading a new self-help book, determined to fix myself for real this time.

I almost deleted this blog.

 I declared 2025 The Year of Unsubscribing. I don’t ever keep new year’s resolutions, so I switched to intentions. They’re better for my perfectionism. At least that’s what my therapist tells me.

So why am I writing on a blog I haven’t touched in two years? Why am I hoping someone reads it when I almost unsubscribed from it myself?

Because I read a Pinterest quote that said, “Your new life is going to cost you your old one.”

Plain and simple.

I wrote some poetry. Then someone asked me, “What about your novel?”

Then I finished my novel, and a friend said, “What about your poetry?”

But at the beginning of this year two people (which statistically is like, 50% of the readership of this blog) asked me about my blog, and it made me pause.

What about my blog?

Well, my blog isn’t perfect, and I hate it for that. I don’t have profound answers, I fear that someone will point out some significant theological or dogmatic flaw in my thought process and tie a millstone around my neck, and I often wonder if I’m just making noise on the internet for my own self-satisfaction.

So maybe it’s time to delete it.

Time to unsubscribe from my own blog. I’d save $36 per year in WordPress fees anyway and that’s a couple bottles of wine in my tax bracket.

But our new life is going to cost us our old one. So maybe it’s time to be monks amok again. Notice I said “our”? Oh yes, this is about you too. Don’t think you’re exempt from it.

Maybe it’s time to give up the resolutions and surrender our lives into the hands of the Living God. He works in ways we could never imagine, after all. I’ve had people quote me to myself, usually a thought that I mumbled in my endless stream-of-consciousness yapping that I didn’t even remember uttering. But it meant something to them. And that? That’s God’s work. Not mine. If I learned anything from the past hell of a year, it was that he is faithful, even when we are faithless.

So, I will be unbrilliant, and may God work through my words.

I will be as theologically sound as I’m capable and let God fill in the gaps. And there will be gaps.

I will be imperfect and uninteresting and likely offer more questions than answers. I will make a joyful noise because I can’t keep silent with God in my midst.

This new life will cost me my old one. The one where I did nothing because nothing was safe. My new life, and I pray yours, will be a narrow path I hope to walk with grace.