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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....
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Consider the birds.

We step onto a path, where the shadows of the trees do the tango with the evening light. We slip off our heels.
I point out a groundhog. She spots a cardinal.
We’ve been sipping punch in crowds all day and I’m wondering how I can get through the weekend. Thinking of the way he squeezed my shoulders outside the palliative care unit, the unopened letter I left beside her bed. How can you explain what someone means to you in 500 words? The dent in their car and my bank account. The way his heart just stopped—and can I bring a casserole? The texts lighting up my phone “guys can you pray guys can you pray please pray if you could just pray for me”.
We step onto the edge of a clearing. We search for the eggs of a killdeer.
“What’s that verse?” I ask her. “The one about the birds.”
“Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them…consider the lilies of the field,” she knows Matthew 6 by heart. “If God so clothes the grass of the field…will he not much more clothe you?”
It’s silent between us then. “Look,” she says, “is that a crane?” We watch a blue heron overhead.
I consider the birds.
“Should we head back.” It’s not a question.
“I’d rather stay here.”
We dread the bits of conversation-making over the tops of wine glasses. And what if someone tells us something else our hearts can’t handle.  
I consider this.
We put on our heels, but there’s still dirt between our toes. And that’s enough.
We meet her on the way back, sitting on a park bench. And we gather around her, our prayers causing the heaviness to lift and washing our mascara away.
Before we head back into the crowd and the lights and the heavy sound of the bass on the dance floor, I pause and hide a bit of the quiet in my heart.
I pause and consider the birds and the way their song sounds in the silence of a clearing.

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