By CAROLINE CARMICHAEL / Staff Writer

With half a month of the new year tucked under its belt, plans are already in motion for Chilton County events, such as its soon Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebrations, its annual Relay for Life event and its sesquicentennial celebration set to mark 150 years for the county’s existence.

What a milestone.

Still, much remains unknown for the new year.

There’s a well-known movie that opens with a New Year’s Eve celebration and a karaoke duet about the “Start of Something New” for the coming year.

Does that strike a chord?

While High School Musical certainly launched itself as the start of something new for many high school fantasies across America, it also stirred that New Year’s wistful anticipation for a brand new, yet untouched, year for its audience.

The possibilities!

At the start of 2018, I’m gazing across a wide-open meadow. There are shadows, yes, and several ruts as well — but there are gently swooping hillocks and dew dappled branches murmuring the dawn of a morning yet unlived and encircling the meadow with its glimmering secrets of tomorrows.

Pure mystery is before us, friends.

I confess I’m one of those “the glass is half full” people.

I’m also realistic, and I can tell you that either way you perceive it, it is true that the glass is half full and it is true that the glass is half empty.

But perhaps only one of these perceptions can inspire a smile.

I know for many people — and their reasons are valid — the mystery I previously described is for them tinted, cast in a shadow of disconcertion or fear and perhaps further obscured with lingering anxiety.

No one knows what tomorrow holds, and for those who experienced upsetting yesterdays, tomorrow can be intimidating.

I have experienced several of those New Year’s sentiments.

I do believe, however, that in knowing the one who holds all my days, I need not fear tomorrow.

Certainly, this perception takes much help from him, and forsaking fear demands I love with a power greater than anything I can muster on my own. It springs from a fountain of life described in Psalm 36.

It is that love that has the power to fill my days with goodness and cast magnificent beams on every meadow set before me.

Living in such love deems a child of God untouchable and denies fear any hold.

It needs only to be received.

Chilton County, here’s to the start of something new! Let’s see what happens.