Let Love Lead the Way

A small essay for facing 2025 anxiety.

Like many of you, I’ve lived the last two months in anticipatory anxiety. I've read news snippets until I couldn’t take it anymore. I’ve worried my bottom lip until it began to peel and itch in a way even my favorite chapstick couldn’t fix. I’ve tried to think of contingencies—of what I will do if the worst that we’ve feared should begin to happen.

It’s been exhausting.

Usually, the cusp of a New Year feels to me like standing at the edge of an unmarred snowy field—all diamonds and sunshine, just waiting for adventurous footprints, and snow angels, and dogs to roll in it.

But this one has felt preemptively marred.

Maybe it’s because of “Project 2025”—the very name feeling ominous to many of us, has seemed to hold captive the title of our next revolution around the sun. Maybe it’s because it’s been a tough year financially for many, and it’s hard to believe that the billionaires in charge have any concept what it’s like to be an average American. As we face the imminent change in presidencies, the memories of January 6, 2021 still fresh in our minds, we find that we are carrying a lot more fear an uncertainty about what the coming years will bring.

I’ve pondered what we will do if SNAP goes away—not only for our customers who rely on food assistance at the farmers market, but for our own family.

I’ve pondered what I will do if my book will be banned for containing queer themes.

I’ve pondered the difficultly my peach farmer friends, and landscaper friends may have in getting migrant laborers. I’ve pondered the way those migrant laborers will be treated by freshly empowered racists.

I’ve pondered the rising prices of food—and what we can do to help feed our communities, while also still keeping our farm business viable.

I’ve pondered the potential negative impacts for my disabled brother in law. My black nephew. For the lesbian wedding I’m planning to attend this year, and the job of my sister-in-law who works in special education.

I’ve sat with my friend as she shared her fears that her adopted daughter might be deported along with her birth mother.

These are heavy concerns—and the list of fears goes on, and on, and on for so many. But I’m tired of being afraid, and fear is not the word I’m going to bring with me into 2025. Because you know what? No one owns 2025. No one.

Just because they slap a year name on their very scary sounding project does not mean that they own the year. Just because they put their guy in office, and all the most corrupt minions imaginable does not mean they are the only ones capable of making a difference either.

WE CAN STILL DO OUR GOOD WORK IN 2025. AND WE MUST.

Anxiety might make me think I’m “preparing”—planning for contingencies in my head (that may or may not happen) But it won’t help me love my neighbor who needs food assistance but no longer qualifies. It won’t help me be open-hearted in conversations to MAGA sympathizers who didn’t realize the ways in which they voted against themselves. It won’t help me live generously with my business, or my art.

This is not a case for sticking our heads in the sand—some awareness of the changes being made and how they will inevitably impact the very real human beings living around us, is important.

But this IS a case for not letting the fear win.

I hear the gentle voice of Emily P. Freeman in my head again—

“Are you being led by love? Or pushed by fear?”

I want to let love lead me into 2025. I want to let an openhearted creativity fuel my actions, as I work towards justice for my neighbors both politically and in the small ways I can personally—boots planted on the ground next to them.

If the things I fear happen, I will face them. One at a time. As they come. I trust that God will give us what we need to stand up when it’s time to stand up—to share what we have generously with those in need, and to show the marginalized communities surrounding us that we see them and value them, even if our government doesn’t.

I don’t know what that will look like on a daily basis. But I don’t have to just yet. I can take it one day at a time, and let love lead the way.

I pray you can too.

So tonight, I will gather with the strangers turned friends, turned family on the eve of this new year. I will raise my glass and toast to the good that is to come—because there is good to come, even if it’s hard to imagine what that might look like right now.

2024 was hard. 2025, might be harder. But if we let love lead us, no matter how hard it all is, I trust that we will be right where we are supposed to be. We will be doing our meaningful work, whether it’s praised and approved of or not. We will be standing up against injustice, even when it’s costly. We will be using our voices to speak up for the vulnerable and the oppressed—using our resources (however large or small) to serve our communities.

This has always been the way forward. And it still is.

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What are you carrying in to this New Year? What are you choosing to leave behind?