Moving from the “Year of the Snake” (2025) into the “Year of the Horse” (2026).
I am not drawn to zodiac themes, and that was not what caught my attention. What stopped me was the language as it described a progression that felt deeply familiar, especially for those of us who are working through hurt and who are in different stages of getting out of the 2×2 church.
The season of the snake was described as shedding what no longer fits. Of slowing down, quiet clarity, and recognizing where we were living out of habit rather than truth. Not rushing change but understanding why it was necessary.
That has been my reality for the last couple years.
Leaving, or even questioning, the 2×2 church was not dramatic or impulsive. It was slow and painful and filled with anxiety and tears. It involved long stretches of silence, deep internal questioning, and the uncomfortable work of noticing things I had been taught not to notice. It meant requiring myself to see where loyalty had replaced honesty, and where spiritual language had been used to silence real, legitimate concerns and pains.
Much of that growth happened invisibly. There was no audience and no big announcements. Just the steady work of letting go and I learned something important in that process…letting go is not failure…it is preparation.
What I have also learned is that clarity does not lead everyone in the same direction.
For some people, healing looks like staying home. Pulling back, resting, doing nothing outwardly for a season. That is good and ok. Stillness can still be faithful and silence can be wise. There should be no obligation to rush into anything new simply because something old has been released.
But for others, and I include myself here, clarity creates movement. After the shedding, I quickly felt a deep pull toward community again. A desire to experience God with other people, in real and embodied ways. Not through inherited structures or borrowed traditions, but through honest presence and shared life. That part did not come easily but it required pushing boundaries I had lived inside for my entire life. Boundaries that were presented as faithfulness but functioned as fences. It meant stepping into rooms with people I had been taught were wrong, unsafe, or not saved. It meant being open and vulnerable with people I did not know, without the familiar language, without the safety of assumed agreement, and without the sense of spiritual arrogance I did not realize I had been given.
It stretched me far outside my comfort zone.
Here is one small example…I have heard many people say, sometimes quietly and sometimes almost apologetically, “If I ever leave, I’m afraid I won’t do anything. I’ll be lazy. I won’t read. I won’t seek God anymore.”
I believed some version of that myself for a long time…but I have come to see that statement for what it usually is. It’s not laziness…it is fear.
The familiar structure did a lot of the work for us. The meetings and the routines and the language. When those fall away, it can feel like nothing will replace them, and that we will simply stop. That fear can keep people frozen far longer than doubt ever could.
Yes, shedding the comfortable and familiar takes effort. A snake does not slide out of its old skin effortlessly. There is resistance…there is friction. There is work involved but the effort is not wasted. That shedding creates space…space to choose rather than comply. Space to seek rather than perform.
What I found was not passivity. It was hunger, a deeper desire to read, to think, to engage, and to experience God without traditions, or another man, deciding the boundaries for me. Then something unexpected happened…God did not disappear when I crossed those lines. The Spirit did not withdraw when I entered unfamiliar spaces. I did not find emptiness or deception, but I found humility, humanity, and faith. I realized a Faith that felt less controlled and more real…less performative and more embodied in who I am and what I was feeling and most importantly, in Christ.
This is where clarity turns into courage…there is a point where staying still becomes more “expensive” than moving forward. Where knowing the truth but refusing to live it creates its own kind of pain.
Truth does not only ask to be acknowledged, it asks to be lived.
This feels like the shift from shedding to movement.
Not running away or rushing ahead but moving toward integrity.
I read somewhere the following line, “If you are in a season of stillness, honor it. Do not rush yourself. Growth does not need an audience, and healing does not follow a schedule.” – unknown
If you feel a pull to step out, to risk community again, to experience God beyond the boundaries you were taught were safe, you are not alone either. Many of us are learning, slowly and imperfectly, how to live what we already know to be true.
The work of “The Snake” has done its work of shedding, now comes the work of “The Horse” walking it out. I’m looking forward to running into 2026 with clarity and joy and excitement…I pray that each of you can move at your own pace in this journey.
By Mike Groseth
December 26, 2025
Originally posted on Connected and Concerned Friends
https://connected-and-concerned-friends.mn.co/posts/95559108