Cap discarded, lost somewhere in the jumble of my purse that I am fully intending to organize, I put the pen to bottom lip and gnaw absentmindedly on its end as I tap out a rhythm on the blank page with my fingertips.

I do not know what to write.

(Maybe “Organize Purse.”)

There is a blue box in my closet.

It houses all of my secrets and all of my mundane.

They start with the Sanrio diary, lock and key long discarded, dated the January I was in grade four. Kylie gave it to me and the first sentence of it reads “Dear Diary, Hello, I am Kayla.”

Obviously I was destined to be a highly skilled authoress.

But I fell in love with the filling of blank pages and filled them I did, again and again until they cause the blue box to sag under their weight.

“What do you have IN here?” my husband asked as he and another trudged it down the ramp of a moving truck.

The spilling out of memories is heavy.

For years I wrote out resolutions, a fresh page and a fresh start on January 1.

Then I promptly set about breaking all of them.

And then I would feel a bit of a failure, falling short of arbitrary standards that I set to measure myself by.

I am thirty now.

Twenty odd years of Januaries gone and twenty odd years of pages filled with intentions.

This January I am three years into this motherhood thing and nothing ever goes as planned.

Our arrival is always late because we can never find socks or her left shoe.

(Maybe “Organize Sock Bin” as well)

And when the Creator paints dusks across the sky I miss it because I’m blowing out an exasperated breath in the hallway where she can’t see my frustration through her tears as she cries in time-out again.

What we both need more than goals is grace.

I decide not to write down resolutions in between the pale blue lines of the page.

I think, this year I will write down a promise instead, because I like the idea of waking up to what won’t ever fail me.

“The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning”
- Lamentations 3:22

I am grateful for a grace that allows me a fresh start on more than just the eve of a new year.