Back in December, my thoughts for the new year beyond mothering my six kids included plans like writing a book, running another half marathon, and organizing my house. Then God laughed at those plans. At least some of them.

I got a tear in my knee playing pickle ball (half marathon – out), and my au pair broke her wrist Christmas Day and left two days later (writing a book – mostly out). I got back from skiing after New Year’s feeling like I was in a snowglobe and I couldn’t see the next step (which I know is a good place to be spiritually because trust and faith and all that but its’s also really uncomfortable when you’re in it).  I didn’t even know how I would manage that first week with my husband gone M-F at a meeting and the big kids having sports at nap time and bed time. Telling my 6th grader he couldn’t go to basketball wasn’t an option. Neither was bringing cranky babies. Military wives, you’re my heroes.

But as usual, God knew what he was doing.

My old sitter was back in town and in between jobs and happy to help us. I decided to go to the Y gym three times a week while the babies played happily in the day care. The second day, my neighbor Dian, who moved to my street from Dublin two years ago, showed up in the parking lot, looking like an angel in spandex, waving at me. “Hello mah dear!” We worked out on things that didn’t hurt my knee (a weight class & the elliptical, yay) for nearly two hours. Dian says things like, ‘you did brilliant!’ and ‘shall we have some Champagne then?’ which would alone make me love her but she is fun and smart even without the Champagne.

Turns out going to the Y for a few hours a week and working out with friends is much, much better for my soul than managing a 21-year-old, much as we loved her. I could feel months of stress melting off of me that I didn’t even know was there.

Perhaps because I entered the New Year so thrown for a loop or twelve, I started to pay attention to all the advice people were offering on social medial. Turns out there are a lot of opinions about how to start off a New Year well. I was amazed at how many official stances on resolutions there were as I checked my phone in between unpacking and putting away Christmas stuff.

The advice panned out as it quickly led me to the KonMari train. The idea that putting order in our homes will put order in our relationships will put order in our lives is so intoxicating, isn’t it?  In years past I have used the equally effective show Horders to help me clean up from Christmas, which will have you pitching stuff faster than you can say ‘does this spark fear?’. But Marie is much nicer to look at than people locked into a prison inside their own homes.

Starting to KonMari my house helped me get my bearings. But it didn’t take long to figure out that what I really needed – and I suspect many people did too – was to just listen to the quiet. After all the giving, all the parties, all the joy-making, I needed to hibernate, to listen to my own thoughts and heart. In the age of social media, it’s so easy to be flooded with other people’s voices. We have to keep reminding ourselves that it is the still, small voice inside us that we need to hear the most.

What I heard when I listened was actually a lot of questions, and even though they sounded a little like Marie’s translator, I knew they were really my own. What did I treasure about the last year?  What did I want to leave there and not bring with me into the new year? What are the changes I want to make? What are the ways I will still love and forgive myself when change is hard?

When I reflected on my dreams and desires for the new year, I had this sense that the most powerful catalyst for change is the feeling of possibility. And there is nothing in our adult lives (pregnancies aside) to let us feel the power of possibility like emptiness. It is pure potential, it is the heart of creativity, it is magic. So I cleared off my window seat, and got to work journaling those answers while the babies slept.

Perhaps the best thing about the New Year is simply the clean, empty pages in the calendar waiting to be written on, but not marked up just yet. Not claimed yet for this commitment or that obligation, instead holding the power of possibility in its emptiness. Without an au pair, I didn’t have to plan out every day. Where I previously felt like I had to do all the things, now I made time for journaling, for getting down on the floor and playing with babies, for working out with a friend at the gym. And I bloomed instantly in the emptiness.

I suspect this is why KonMari has taken hold at the start of a new year. Because the same quiet, the same emptiness that holds possibility in our time is also true for our space. And when we have room in our lives – in our homes and our calendars – our hearts have a chance to spread out a little, seek out what they love, put down deeper roots, and find peace.

It’s a lesson I need to keep relearning, and one I think God teaches us over and over. He uses things like sickness and injury and pregnancy and babies to do it sometimes, but he has to get through somehow.

So here’s to slowing down and finding joy. To quieting the space in your homes. And as much as parents of small kids can, finding quiet in the space in our calendar. Let’s also do the same for our hearts – clean out unnecessary fears, and unrealistic expectations, and find a window seat to sit and think. Or at the very least, clean off the one you already have. When we do, we are left with all of our dreams, and the hope that they might come true. Which is exactly where I want to be at the start of a new year.