Ahhh 2013.
What a year. I learned more about myself than I have in all the past years combine. I learned what I like, what I don’t like and what I can do. I learned the limits I can push my body to and the boundaries I can break. How much I can give, how much I need in return. I learned to love. To forgive; both others and myself. How to laugh, how to delight in the simple things again. How to see beauty all around me. How to go with the flow, roll with it, and throw the unfinished lists away. I learned how to play again, how to be a kid.
I learned how to live. I’m learning how to live.
And there are things I could say right now about how I have so much to clean and a whole list of things I need to get done, but I won’t. Because it’s not important.
It’s not important.
Why? Because I spent the past few days with an incredible family who I love more than I ever imagined possible. Because I got to snuggle on the couch in front of a fire with puppies on my lap. Because I have incredible friends whom I love. Because I had a great night last night filled with tears from laughing so hard. Because I’m here thinking about my past couple of years and all that has happened and I am just overwhelmed with all the blessings I have been given and all the amazing things I have learned.
Things like: it’s super hard to bake a cake on a stove, how to navigate my way through huge cities like Bogota and Bangkok, that I actually like Thai food, I love learning languages and I’m actually kind of good at it. I learned that life isn’t fair but it is still so good and when in doubt just take the next small step. I learned to pay off my credit card every month and that savings accounts are important. I learned that it’s okay to get angry with God, he can take it. I learned that everything can change in the blink of an eye, but it is okay, because God never blinks. I learned that every day is special and I should be strange now, I don’t have to wait until I’m 80 to wear the purple sweater. I’ve learned that what other people think of me is none of my business. I learned that wholeheartedness opens the way for genuine intimacy. I learned that as I lay my heart at God’s feet nothing I can do, or fail to do, can ever separate me from His love. I learned that when guilt conspires, God gives grace. And I have really learned what it means to really love.
I never would have dreamed that this is where I’d be now, that this is how I’d feel in this moment, that this would be my life.
I don’t make New Year’s resolutions anymore, because I don’t believe in them anymore really. I don’t think you have to “resolve” to do anything except live. To just take what you are given and embrace it. To see the beauty and wonder in the small things and to be thankful for each day that you’re given because it is such an incredible gift.
So that’s what I’m doing this year. I’m rolling with it. I’m, God-willing, launching on the world race in July where God will just rock my world. I’m just rolling with it and going to see what it is that God has in store. I literally have no idea what God is going to do, except that it is going to be incredible and I am determined to live every minute of it up, all of it, these few months of fundraising and preparation and the full 11 months on the field and the return home and the time after that.
2013… a good year. But 2014, I’ve got a real good feeling about you. I’m ready for you to blow my mind. I want to be challenged even more. I want to be dared to be who I am in ways that I have never been. I want to be broken and convicted, molded and shaped more like the woman God created me to e. I want to pray more and worry less. I want to go more and fret less. I want to do more and say less. I want to stop wanting and start doing, start being. 2014 bring it on. I want to be overwhelmed by life. I’m ready to love foolishly and hold nothing back because reality is at the end of the day I can’t take anything with me except my soul.
So come on 2014 hit me with your best shot.
