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How to have a truly happy new year.

For the first time in years, I don’t remember my New Year’s resolution from January. Usually, I write it down in my journal or on a note I stick to my mirror. There’s been many of those dog-eared sticky notes from years past. The year of contentment. Speaking life. We passed pancakes across the breakfast table on January 1st this year. “What do you want from 2018?” I can’t remember my answer. I know what I didn’t want though. I didn’t want to walk into her office and share the parts of my life I’m inclined to hide. I didn’t want to Facetime her the day after she delivered her baby that never breathed. I didn’t want to spend four months wondering how I’d walk into her house on Christmas day and see her empty chair. I didn’t want to go on another first date that led nowhere. We sit across from each other in a little coffee shop in Colorado, picking at a charcuterie board. “When I think about all of the things I have left to go through,” her voice cracks....

"I do it myself."


 My parents leave for warmer weather for a week and leave me in charge of two barns full of pigs, a farmhouse, a dog, and 200 acres of land.

On Sunday, friends ask how everything is going on the farm.

“Great!” I say, proud of my self-dependence. “My parents check in way too much.”

I'm the little girl who would stick out her lip and say, "I do it myself." Even when I couldn’t.

On Monday, two water pipes break and I’m staring at my Dad’s work bench and a smorgasbord of broken parts. I can do this myself. I can figure this out. I will be a good plumber whether I am or not. I will not call my dad.

I call my dad.

He tells me to ask the neighbour for help.

Why is asking for help one of the hardest things to do? I do not want to need people. Or want people to know I need them.

Self-dependence takes away my confidence to call for help.

My pride balloon slowly deflates when I cannot solve the problem.

By the end of the day, two different neighbours come over to help and we laugh about the bad day together.

I realize it's true: “Two are better than one, Because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion.” Ecclesiastes 4:9-10


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