So this winter break I’ve become really interested — okay addicted — to an HGTV show called Fixer Upper. Despite this show, and this network really, being responsible for my wife and me thinking we could buy a building (and then we did) I still love this show. And what’s not to love?

There’s the typical goofy husband / beautiful wife combo who work with clients to make their dream homes become reality. There’s some silliness during construction, a peek at the Gaines’ growing family and their animals at Magnolia Farms. It’s great.

What I especially love is that Big Reveal at the end. Ooh, I just friggin’ love it!!! The couple is nervously laughing and their shoulders are all tense, or they’re grabbing one another’s hands in anticipation, and Joanna or Chip ask, “Are you ready to see your fixer upper?” and the couple says “Yes!” and then the screens are pulled away and then someone shrieks with joy, or the couple hugs, or they exchange handshakes or hugs with Chip and Joanna. It’s the best, that moment of unveiling and sharing after such a long time of waiting and hoping and wishing and dreaming for the day.

I love the moment of the big reveal because energetically, spiritually even, it feels like a big moment of exchange, of following through with all your promises and giving it everything you had, of showcasing earnestness and honesty, of having every good intention fulfilled and put on display, of giving and healing — healing both the home owners and the home itself. It’s the final moment of taking someone’s trust (and money, of course) and turning it into a newness that was previously only imagined in the mind’s eye. The home, the place where our bodies and minds come to rest and where our energy is replenished, is made new. It’s just so… — I just love it.

And in some ways, New Year’s Eve feels like that, too. Tonight is the big reveal on the new year, on the start of 2018, something new and fresh. It’s like a backyard full of freshly fallen snow, and no one — not even a sparrow or a stray alley cat — has stepped foot on it yet. It’s blank, and the potential seems endless.

The tricky thing is what to do — and how to live — once we get that clean slate, that do-over, that moment of starting anew. I know I’ve had many Mondays where “this is the week that everything will go just the way I want it,” and of course it doesn’t — because life is a messy organism. And after one fail I wait for the next Monday, and it turns out that over the years I’ve spent a lot of time waiting to start over.

So I go into this new year focusing on the big themes I want to heal and make new — no, not make new — just see and live in a new way. Because we all have lives that are just like these fixer uppers — the bones are good and the potential is there, we just have to see it in ourselves and then lovingly, day after day, choose the path that creates change and fulfillment — one little Big Reveal at a time.