It’s about to happen again.  Those promises spoken under the breath.  The pleading to one’s self to do better this time.  The clean slate, slightly dusty, chalky residue coating it still  as it reminds us there’s still something left of yester-year just above the surface.  It’s about to happen again.  The ‘Y’ down the street will see an influx of travelers, the “magic” pill company will peddle its ’emperor’s new clothes’ gig for another year.  The husband will promise to be a better father, and spouse, while the wife will promise not to feel so guilty about piling laundry and late slightly under cooked meals.

Do I sound a little cynical?  Perhaps so.  Although perhaps it’s a little too close to home for most of us.  Perhaps as people toast to the close of another year, silencing the book at the very last page of the very last chapter, there is that one small word that eclipses the disappointments.  It’s a relatively small word, though it promises to mend the broken fences and extinguish the fully engulfed bridges.  It’s a word that sends butter flies in flight in the stomach and rekindles the yearnings of the youthful child in us all to be good little boys and girls…or to die trying.  Perhaps as the final page, though yellowed and singed, is turned we are drawn to the “what could be’s” of tomorrow.  Perhaps the “maybe’s” once again carry promises far more inviting than the “should have’s” of our last year’s yesterdays.  So as we turn that final crinkly, protesting, crusty page, closing its book, pushing it aside and picking up our tomorrow’s, that word escapes our lips once again in our maybe’s and our want to be’s.  Hope.  It’s what allows us to strive to improve upon.  It’s what motivates us to flee our regrets, divorcing our estranged worries and fears and embrace the hopes and reigniting the dreams once again.

Perhaps resolutions aren’t all bad…perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t a train at all, but the warmth of a brand new day inviting us to part take in it.  This is my way of wishing you a happy new year, embrace it well, drink deeply in its promises and just maybe that child in us is right after all …you can be a better little boy or little girl in the new year.   Here’s to Hope, may it  become deeply rooted in us all in the coming year.  Not just ‘Hope’ in and of itself, but Hope in something far beyond our grasp and understanding.  A hope that stems from the Author and Creator of this life.  An Alpha and Omega kind of hope, one that isn’t shaken at the gusts and gales of a single day, but remains rooted in us all so that we can resolutely say at the end of this year’s pages we are ready, come what may!

-Best of wishes as you embrace that hope once again.