Trying to update to 1.16.2

[dcook]

I am trying to update to 1.16.2 and I got to the following step in the instructions:

git checkout v1.16.x

However I get this error:

bgc@server1:~/nodebb$ git checkout v1.16.x
install/package.json: needs merge
error: you need to resolve your current index first

Can you advise how I can get past this error?
I think I am having this because I edited some of the text in this file:
public/language/en-GB/email.json

However at this point I don't care about those changes, I can always go back and fix them later, I just want to complete the upgrade and if I have to overwrite the email template file thats fine.

[PitaJ]

@dcook please share the output of git status