A fresh paper planner smells like anxiety. It's the feeling that if you can just organize the boxes right, you can finally become the person you were supposed to be last year. But I'm tired of throwing away unused planners. I want this year to be new.

When I was dating, I thought God would deliver for me the way he had for my friends. I just needed to pray, ask her out, and trust the process. But when I finally met my wife, it had nothing to do with that. Instead, some friends set us up while I was living in Boston and she was in D.C. It's a script I never could have imagined, even though it has the fingerprints of God all over it. Whether God had planned for me to be married or not, I needed to learn that his plans will often surprise us.