As the new year begins, I’ve been noticing how much uncertainty I’m carrying with me into it.
Not in a dramatic, everything-is-falling-apart way, but in a quieter, more reflective one. The kind that shows up when the calendar turns and you realize faith doesn’t magically reset just because the year does.
This past week, I’ve felt my faith wavering in small, almost sneaky ways. Not enough to make me abandon my choices, but enough to slow me down. I’d catch myself rereading old notes, second-guessing decisions I felt solid about just days before. Sitting with that familiar question of, am I actually trusting the process, or just telling myself I am?
At the same time, I’ve been trying to find inspiration for my next film. The kind that usually arrives out of nowhere and takes over my brain. This time, nothing. I’ve opened notebooks, scrolled through half-formed ideas, stared at blank pages longer than I want to admit. I kept thinking, it’ll come tomorrow. And then tomorrow would pass.
Then, in the middle of all that, I got an email I wasn’t expecting.
Another film festival selection. One I’ll be attending in late February. It didn’t magically erase the doubt or suddenly deliver inspiration, but it did something quieter and maybe more important. It reminded me that things can still be moving forward, even when it feels like I’m standing still. That progress doesn’t always announce itself on my timeline.
Over the past seven days, I’ve been sharing a Kwanzaa letter series on social, reflecting on each principle in real time. Today marks the final day of that series, centered on Imani, or faith. It feels fitting to sit with this principle here, at the start of a new year, where belief often has to coexist with uncertainty.
This letter reflects what faith has been asking of me lately.
Dear You,
You can do everything right and still feel unsure.
Still wonder if what you’re building will hold. Still question whether the effort you’re putting in now will make sense later. That quiet uncertainty doesn’t always mean something is wrong.
Sometimes it’s simply where faith is asked to live.
Today is the seventh day of Kwanzaa, guided by the principle of Imani, which means faith.
Imani is not blind optimism or certainty about how things will turn out. It is the willingness to stay in relationship with what you cannot yet see. To keep tending to what matters, even when proof is delayed. Faith, in this sense, is not about answers.
It is about trust and the decision not to abandon yourself when clarity hasn’t arrived.
Faith often looks smaller than we expect. It can sound like, I’ll keep going for now. It can feel like choosing not to harden in moments of doubt. It can live in the quiet knowing that you have faced uncertainty before and found your way through, even when the path wasn’t clear at the start.
Imani reminds us that belief does not require perfection.
It only asks that you stay.
That you keep showing up to your life with openness instead of retreat. That you allow yourself to trust something beyond immediate evidence, whether that’s your resilience, your community, or the slow unfolding of time itself.
If your faith feels fragile right now, that does not mean it’s gone. Fragile things still exist. They still matter. And often, they are worth protecting precisely because they are tender.
Faith does not mean knowing how this ends. It means trusting that you can meet whatever comes.
Holding faith without certainty,
Kasim