Start By Looking Up
by Sarah Hauser
Welcome to the season of goal setting, resolution brainstorming, fitness planning, promise making, and a general attitude of “let’s completely overhaul my life and habits this next year.”
Or is that just me?
Many of us dive headfirst into the new year with wide-eyed enthusiasm and an armful of good intentions. But by February, we’ve lived enough life to know our impossible goals might need to take a back seat. We stumble along for another few months, and then by the summer when schedules are wacky, we throw in the towel on our January promises completely. Then September comes, and the fall brings new goal-setting energy. So we once again vow to remake our lives, at least until six weeks later when we’re in full holiday mode, frantically wrapping teacher gifts and vacuuming sprinkles off the floor after the family cookie decorating day.
Finally, the no-man’s land week between Christmas and New Year’s arrives, and we take a minute to recover, download a year-end reflection guide, and resolve to be more intentional, more focused, less frazzled.
And on and on the cycle goes.
Maybe you’ve avoided running on this yearly hamster wheel––and if that’s the case, tell me your secrets. But I know some of us end every year with a mixed bag of feelings: gratitude, sure, but also possibly a dose of failure and a sprinkle of disappointment, especially in ourselves. So we start the next year with either an optimism that says, “Let’s do this!” or a weary cynicism that asks, “What’s the point?”
But what if we didn’t have to choose either optimism or cynicism? What if we had a year free from overly lofty goals and kicking ourselves when we didn’t meet them? What if, no matter our circumstances, what we accomplished, or what we’re hoping for in 2026, we could hit pause on the vicious cycle and instead be steady and content, come what may?
How? Well, maybe we don’t start with self-reflection and goal-setting (although those are good practices). Maybe we start by looking up.
Psalm 105 recounts a host of acts God did for His people. He made a covenant with Abraham and prepared Joseph to rescue the people in Egypt from famine. He later brought the Israelites out of Egypt and into the land He had promised them. And then in Psalm 106, the author recounts the faithlessness of Israel-–but how God remained faithful. They forgot God’s love, they worshiped the image of a calf, they complained and didn’t obey. Yet verses 44-45 say this:
“Nevertheless, he looked upon their distress, when he heard their cry. For their sake he remembered his covenant, and relented according to the abundance of his steadfast love.”
Nevertheless.
Listen, I am all for end of the year reflections, goal-setting, finding a word of the year, building healthy habits, and all the new year intentions. But as we practice those things, let us not analyze ourselves so closely that we forget to see who God is and what He’s done. Let us not make our failures bigger than His grace or let our successes shine more than His glory.
We need to lift our eyes off ourselves and see that He is our Creator and Sustainer, the One who gives us our very breath and purpose and life everlasting. It’s His grace that fuels our hope and it’s His grace that redeems our missteps.
No matter what happened in 2025 or what happens in the next 12 months, God’s love and goodness and grace and unending kindness for you has not wavered. When we know that, we can let go of unrealistic expectations. We can move forward when we don’t meet a goal. We can take one small step at a time instead of trying to overhaul our lives in an instant.
Each day isn’t part of a vicious cycle of good intentions and broken promises. Each year isn’t a scale weighing successes and failures. Rather, each moment is a chance to bear witness to God’s grace. In our wins and losses, nevertheless He remains faithful.
And so, as we close out another year, let us take a deep breath and say with the psalmist:
“Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel,
From everlasting to everlasting!
And let all the people say, ‘Amen!’
Praise the LORD!” (Psalm 106:48)
Thanks be to God.
Sarah J. Hauser is a writer and speaker living near Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband, four kids, and a very loud rescue dog––oh and a few fish and snails. She is the author of All Who Are Weary: Finding True Rest by Letting Go of the Burdens You Were Never Meant to Carry (Moody Publishers). Read more at sarahjhauser.com, check out her newsletter, or find her on Instagram (@sarah.j.hauser).