He sat at the kitchen table on the last Sunday of December with a brand new planner and a pen that still had the plastic sleeve on it. The house had gone still after the guests left. He opened to the first page and began to copy last year’s goals into the new book, one by one. Read the Bible through. Lose fifteen pounds. Pay off the car. Call his brother every month. About halfway down the list his pen slowed. He could not remember the last time he had called his brother, and the car was not close to paid off. He closed the planner and looked at the dark window over the sink. Starting again felt a lot like admitting he had failed.
Maybe you have sat at that table. The calendar turns over, and every voice around us says the same thing. New year, new you, new goals. We rush forward before we have looked back at all. Then the old list shows up in the new planner like a debt we forgot we owed.
Why We Skip the Looking Back
Looking back at a year is uncomfortable. It brings up the goals we dropped, the people we meant to call, the prayers that did not seem to go anywhere. It is easier to skip to the fresh page and pretend the old one never happened.
There is another reason we skip it. Many of us treat a review like a performance report. We picture a manager with a clipboard, and the person with the clipboard is us. We read the list, count what we missed, and hand ourselves a bad grade. Of course we avoid that meeting. Nobody schedules a time to be scolded.
A review does not have to be that. A year-end review done with God is closer to a walk back over the ground you covered, with someone who was there the whole time. You are not defending yourself. You are noticing. I can remember that I have written about planning your whole life and missing the point, and rushing past the old year to chase a new plan is a small version of that same trap. The point is not the list. It is the life the list was meant to serve.
Numbering Your Days
Moses prays that God would teach us to number our days.
12 Teach us to number our days,
Psalm 90:12 New International Version
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Notice that he does not ask for a better system. He asks to count. Counting is what a review is. A year is about three hundred and sixty-five days, and most of them have already been spent. A heart of wisdom starts with looking at where they went.
If you keep a weekly Sunday reset, a year-end review is the same habit stretched over twelve months. The weekly version asks what is coming. The yearly version asks what happened. Both are ways of treating time as something handed to you, not something you own.
Three Questions for the Year
Asaph, in a hard season, makes a decision. He will remember the deeds of the Lord, his wonders of old, and meditate on all his work.
11 I will remember the deeds of the Lord;
Psalm 77:11-12 New International Version
yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago.
12 I will consider all your works
and meditate on all your mighty deeds.”
Memory is a spiritual act for him. He does not trust his feelings about the present. He walks back through what God has actually done.
You can do the same with three plain questions.
What did God carry this year? Start here, before anything else. Think of the doors that opened, the bills that got paid in ways you did not expect, the hard conversation that went better than it should have, the person who showed up. Write them down, even the small ones. Most of us forget God’s help faster than we forget our failures, and a list fixes that.
What did I carry that was never mine? Look at the places you strained. A role you took on because nobody else would. A worry you held for someone else’s choices. A goal you chased because a friend or a feed made it look important. Some of the weight in a year is simply wrong weight. Naming it is the first step toward setting it down.
What do I release? Paul says he forgets what lies behind and strains toward what lies ahead.
13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:13-14 New International Version
That forgetting is not pretending. It is letting go once you have looked. The unmet goal, the missed call, the habit that did not stick, all of it can be handed over with one plain sentence. I did not do this. I give it back.
Look especially at the goals you reached. And also I wrote about how success can feel empty, and a review is a good place to notice whether what you achieved was what you actually wanted. A fifteen-pound loss and a paid-off car mean very little if you lost a brother along the way.
Keeping the Review Small Enough to Finish
Many reviews die because they are too big. A workbook, a retreat weekend, forty questions. Keep yours simple enough that you will finish it.
Give it one hour in one sitting, with a notebook and no phone. Start with the three questions. Do not set a single goal that day. Writing goals while you are still tired and a little ashamed produces the list that failed last year.
If you are married, do it together, or take turns reading your answers out loud. If you are not, share the first question with a friend. Saying God’s help out loud has a way of making it real.
The practice of examen does this for a single day, and the year-end version borrows the same questions. If you already end your nights that way, you will find this familiar.
Then wait. Leave the planner closed for a week. Let the review sit. When you do pick up the pen, ask a new question. Not what do I want to accomplish, but what has God put in front of me for this year? Lamentations says the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases and his mercies are new every morning.
22 Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
Lamentations 3:22-23 New International Version
for his compassions never fail.
23 They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
A new year is one more morning. It does not need to be earned by a perfect plan.
Read Also: The Hard Questions: Why Does the Bible Tell Us Both to Answer a Fool and Not to?
Read Also: Stewardship Spotlight: The Ten-Minute Look at Where Your Money Actually Goes
Read Also: Living With Roommates as an Adult and Still Having a Real Home
Conclusion
He left the new planner closed on the table that Sunday and went to bed. The next afternoon he sat down again with a plain notebook and wrote three questions at the top of the page. By the second one he had stopped for a long time. He thought about all the weight he had carried for other people’s choices, and then he wrote his brother’s name. The following Saturday he made the call. Then he opened the new planner, and the first page stayed blank a little longer, until he knew what belonged on it.
