By: Rev. Stephanie York Arnold
Dec. 22, 2025
This season of Epiphany brings with it a fresh year. Like the Magi of old journeyed to find the newborn babe, we have journeyed into a New Year, a year filled with uncertain possibilities and the chance to begin anew.
In 2025 I moved from being a pastor of a beloved congregation to leading one of our general agencies. This change has been much like the change I experienced when my husband and I brought our daughter home from the hospital after her birth. We longed for her. We prayed for her. We struggled to have her. Even today we tell her she was everything we hoped for when she finally arrived. Yet I still found myself hiding and crying in my walk-in closet after bringing her home, when I tangibly realized I couldn’t finish an episode of my favorite show in the evenings because I needed to care for a crying baby.
I sobbed to my spouse, “We will never be able to finish a show again!” Of course, time would prove that my feelings, though valid, were not our lived reality. But in that moment, the newness of being a parent and all the responsibility that came with it was so demanding it nearly took my breath away. I realized in those first few months, and at every stage of parenting since, you can’t know what you don’t know, and no amount of well-meaning people giving you advice prepares you for walking the path yourself.
Saying yes to this new role as General Secretary was similarly prayed over but nonetheless bewildering to journey into. Amidst a changing denomination and my new role, I find myself wondering: Can I learn new things and adapt? Will I ever feel confident in the gifts I can offer again? Will I ever feel like I know what I am doing?
For almost a year my days have been straddled between saying goodbye to a way of serving that had grown comfortable and saying hello to a brand-new way of serving that leaves me breathless with my uncomfortable unknowing.
I don’t think the year changing will bring all that to an end, but I embrace that 2026 will likely be a year that offers continued growth, integration, adaptation, and the opportunity to settle more fully into a learner’s mindset. Thankfully, at this point in my life I do have the experience of knowing that all things change with time—the easy, the daunting, the happy, the despair, the confidence, and the bewilderment. It all gives way in time to the next thing along the journey. There is some measure of comfort in that truth for me. We aren’t meant to simply follow the star and stay in the manger where it led us, but instead to experience the fullness of the journey, always returning home by a new path.
As you begin this New Year and reflect upon this season of Epiphany in your own life, I offer you Jan Richardson’s poem “For Those Who Have Far to Travel.” May it be a blessing of truth to you and may it be a guidepost as you make your journey this year.
If you could see
the journey whole
you might never
undertake it;
might never dare
the first step
that propels you
from the place
you have known
toward the place
you know not.
Call it
one of the mercies
of the road:
that we see it
only by stages
as it opens
before us,
as it comes into
our keeping
step by
single step.
There is nothing
for it
but to go
and by our going
take the vows
the pilgrim takes:
to be faithful to
the next step;
to rely on more
than the map;
to heed the signposts
of intuition and dream;
to follow the star
that only you
will recognize;
to keep an open eye
for the wonders that
attend the path;
to press on
beyond distractions
beyond fatigue
beyond what would
tempt you
from the way.
There are vows
that only you
will know;
the secret promises
for your particular path
and the new ones
you will need to make
when the road
is revealed
by turns
you could not
have foreseen.
Keep them, break them,
make them again:
each promise becomes
part of the path;
each choice creates
the road
that will take you
to the place
where at last
you will kneel
to offer the gift
most needed—
the gift that only you
can give—
before turning to go
home by
another way.
“For Those Who Have Far to Travel” © Jan Richardson from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons. Used by permission. janrichardson.com
York Arnold is the general secretary for the General Commission on the Status and Role of Women.