looking back

2011 is just a few weeks away from completion.  This year has been full of both joy and heartbreak.   I traveled to Mexico and made amazing new friends, I worked odd jobs that gave me just enough money to make it through the year, I borrowed lots of books from the library, got accepted into a post-bac pre-med program at University of Maryland, ran my first 5-K race, went through the heart ache of losing lots of friends as the aftermath of my parents losing their jobs as pastors, and also found myself in the middle of many life lessons that I didn't anticipate.

 At the moment, I'm in the midst of the heartbreak portion that occurred this year, and I'm not really at a place where I can fully put into words how it's felt or what future I can see beyond this point.  I've cried a lot.  That's been good.  Other than that, I'm slow to process everything because I don't want it to move on too hastily; I don't want to miss the treasures God is purifying in my heart as He dislodges things like man pleasing and faulty definitions of success and security.

One thing I did do tonight, as a way to look back on this year and create expectation for what's to come, is read the blog entry I wrote on the first of this year, 1-1-11.  It's funny how the very thing I started to realize then is actually coming full circle in my life:

"I'm realizing how much I don't need, which is making me all the more thankful for the things that I do need--most of them not tangible. It's crazy the flimsy fabrication of safety that is made with the tangibles in life--and how easy it is to waste our whole lives working for those things that make us feel safe, while the living is done outside of that poorly made blanket.

Cheers to what is to come! And thank God for His faithfulness in the last year."

This year, more than any, I have come face to face with the fabrications of safety I've clung to in my life.

All I can say, even through the tears and heartache, is that I am thankful that God is taking me and my family through this process.  He's been the most faithful and best of friends.

So here's to the living that is done outside of poorly made blankets of safety.