What if Nothing Changes - Reflections on entering 2025

I’ve been told that I’m an intense person, and I tend to believe that’s true. I’m a person of strong opinions, deep obsessions, and a quick tongue. The older I get, the more I crave a less intense life.

 I want to read and write my little stories, and bake and scrapbook, and live intensely, not be intense. In a word, I desire change. I think we all do.
  
​ I’ve been thinking a lot about this new year, and something that has really been on my heart is this question “What if nothing changes?”

What if I am just as intense as ever? What if I’m at the same job, same school, still friends with the same people? What if my book remains unpublished and I am still single?
What would you do if you entered 2026 the same way you entered 2025? You’re not any slimmer, or taking AP classes or off of social media or accepted into the internship of your dreams. What if you’re not unrecognizable, you’re just you?
  
 What if the change this year brings is internal not external.
    
What if this year you grow closer to God, learn to understand his word and hear his voice under the wind? What if this year you make time for peace so that your head isn’t so very loud?

What if this year you don’t grow into who you want to be, but into who you always were. The very person God knit together in your mother’s womb. Would you be okay with that? Okay if nothing decided to change?
  
​ What if the change this year isn’t the chiseling of your muscles, but a softening of your soul?

Because this year, maybe nothing crazy will happen, or maybe it will. What if this year you trust God with the growth? Trusting that he will lead you to where you need to go.

In the hit Broadway musical Wicked (oh, have you heard of it?) There is a song that really stands out to me. After their friendship essentially falls apart, Glinda and Elphaba reunite only to go their separate ways, they sing a song called “For Good.” Possibly one of the most powerful and moving songs in musical theater, there is a lyric that has been on my mind as I’ve been considering 2025, “And we are led, to those who help us most to grow, if we let them.”

​What if instead of worrying about where we are going and how we’ll get there, we let God lead us to the people and situations that will grow us? As the song goes on to say, “Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better?... I do believe I have been changed…for good.”

If we put God at the heart center of 2025, we will change for good. The circumstances around us may not always be good, but we serve a God who works all things together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)
  
God will lead us to where we need to go this year. It may not be easy, circumstances may not change at all, but we can trust that God will use it all for good. If we only let him.
    
In perhaps the greatest piece of literature, after a series of traumatizing events, Estella says, “I have been bent and broken, but I hope, into a better shape.” That author is Charles Dickens and the book is Great Expectations. What Estella says at the very end of the novel has always resonated with me. As time goes and as things change and challenges arise, all we can do is hope that the shape we have been bent into is a better one, one that bears storms better.

​We may be bent, nothing may change at all, but if you choose to trust God, you will be changed for good.

Belle Thomas

Belle is the writer and dreamer behind An Old Fashioned Girl. She is passionate about reminding girls of their identity in Christ, classic books, history, Louisa May Alcott, and earl grey tea. ​​​​​