This Means Home

The beginning of a new year has a way of pulling our attention forward.

Almost immediately, we’re asked what comes next — what we’re working toward, what we hope to change, what version of ourselves we plan to become. There’s an unspoken urgency in the way January arrives, as if the year won’t begin properly unless we name it, shape it, and move quickly into it.

But I’ve noticed that this season — right now — is quieter than that.

The days are still slow and dim. The mornings linger. Life hasn’t fully shifted yet, even if the calendar insists that it has. And I’m learning that I don’t want to rush past this moment just to feel caught up with what’s coming.

At the start of a new year, I don’t want to leap ahead. I want to stay here.

In this season of motherhood, time already moves faster than I can keep up with. Children grow while I’m folding laundry. Days blur together while I’m tending to small needs that feel endless and fleeting all at once. Rushing forward only makes that ache sharper — the sense that something important is slipping by while I’m busy planning the next thing.

So instead of asking what’s next, I’ve been asking how to be more present right now.

Presence doesn’t look dramatic. It looks like staying on the couch a few minutes longer while my toddler leans into me. It looks like noticing the way the house sounds in the evening when everyone is finally asleep. It looks like lighting a candle instead of reaching for my phone, letting the quiet settle instead of filling it.

These moments don’t prepare me for the future — they root me in the life I’m already living.

There is so much pressure to treat the new year like a doorway into something better, brighter, more organized. But I’m beginning to believe that meaning isn’t found by rushing ahead into the next season. It’s found by paying attention to the one we’re still in.

Winter, especially, asks us to slow. To rest. To resist the instinct to hurry toward spring before it arrives. And I think our lives move in the same way. There are seasons meant for growth and visibility, and seasons meant for quiet tending — for staying close to home, to ourselves, to the people right in front of us.

This year, I don’t want to rush my life forward in search of momentum.

I want to notice it as it unfolds — the ordinary evenings, the unremarkable afternoons, the soft beginnings and gentle endings of each day. I want to let this season finish speaking before I move on.

Looking ahead will come naturally. Plans will form. Change will arrive whether I’m ready or not. But presence — real presence — is something I have to choose.

At the start of this new year, I’m choosing to stay.

To stay in this season of motherhood as it is.
To stay with the moments that don’t repeat.
To stay grounded in the life that’s already happening, instead of rushing toward the one I imagine is next.

This feels like a quieter way to begin.
And maybe a truer one, too.