Dear Readers,

I resonated with this post from my friend, Katherine Bolger Hyde, who is an excellent and thoughtful writer. I’ve asked her to guest blog this week, and she graciously agreed.

The following post is reprinted in its entirety with permission from the author.

Begin Again: A belated meditation on new years and new beginnings

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, because they inevitably get broken. But I do use the new year as a time to think about how I can begin again—how I can add more of the things that truly enhance my life and subtract the things that may seem pleasant or convenient but ultimately only get in the way.

This new year of 2026 has already shown us the kind of year it promises to be, and it’s not the kind most of us would wish for. But I think if I can begin again in a few crucial areas, I can at least avoid being responsible for the world getting any worse—and perhaps I can brighten it just a tiny bit, for myself and for others.

So here are my intentions to begin again in 2026.

1. Be kind. No matter what is happening around me, I can always choose to be kind. I can smile and say “no problem” when a stranger bumps into me or takes the parking space I was aiming for or makes a mistake in ringing me up at the store. I can go out of my way to make someone’s day brighter in any of a thousand ways, large and small. I can compliment someone on their hair or their hat or their laugh or their skill, and help them remember they are worthy in God’s sight.
2. Be thankful. I can cease to take for granted and instead be grateful for all the things that have not yet been taken away from me—the air I breathe, the water I drink and bathe in, the abundant food I have access to, the freedom to worship as I please, my perfectly adequate house, my amazingly far-beyond-adequate family and friends, the mostly peaceful city I live in, the retirement income that hasn’t evaporated yet.
3. Be generous. I can choose to share all these blessings—material things, yes, but also my time, my attention, whatever modicum of wisdom I’ve acquired in my nearly seven decades of life. I can share the love God lavishes on me with all the human icons of His presence who surround me. Whatever I give will be given back to me, pressed down, heaped up, and running over.
4. Spread beauty. I can choose to pursue beauty and create it as best I can, refusing to listen to the voice that whispers there’s no point in creating beauty when the world is on fire. Just recently, I was reminded by an old episode of Doctor Who that beauty can redeem even one of the most evil creatures in the universe. Of course that was fiction, but there’s truth in it. A person who comes face to face with true beauty will find it harder to continue to be cruel.
5. Don’t judge. We all have some group or groups we are sorely tempted to judge. For many of us, it’s people on the opposite side of the Great Red-Blue Divide. Or even people on our own side who we feel are not doing enough to fight the wrongs perpetrated by the other side. But you know what? For every person you judge, someone else is judging you. Who is helped by this? Who is enabled to become a better person? Neither the judger nor the judgee—in fact, no one at all. Only God has the right to judge, since He knows every heart and every circumstance, and He is the source of all Good. And most of the time, He chooses not to judge—at least, not until we’ve exhausted all our opportunities to repent.

I hope you have your own list of ways to begin again this year—and faith and hope enough to pursue those ways. The light hasn’t been put out yet.

Katherine Bolger Hyde is the author of a number of novels, including the recent The Vestibule of Heaven (Ancient Faith Publishing, 2024).

Learn more about her work at kbhyde.com and follow her on Substack.