Now that we're 5 days into the new year, I can hardly remember 2011 at all. Oh kidding. I remember what I wore to school in 1984. Of course I remember last year.
I will remember 2011 as being a good year. It was quiet. It was calm. After the roller coaster of 2009 and the chaos that was 2010, the quiet and calm was welcomed. I know that it sounds very trite to say that I am completely different person now than I was when this year began, but to some degree I am a changed person. I feel like that I have learned more this year than I can remember learning in several years combined during my adult life. The lessons have not been easy, but they have been good.
I'm a worrier by nature. I can slip into worry mode in about 4 seconds flat. I've tried to put some perspective on that worry. Did you know that the phone company will not stop your phone service if you forget to pay your phone bill for a couple of weeks? Two years ago I would have come unhinged if that had happened. When daddy died though, I realized that there are some things in life that we cannot control and there are some things in life that aren't worth the stress and lost sleep. Need another example? Being the girl who rushed puppy to the Emergency Vet when he fell asleep in his water bowl, naturally he always got his heartworm prevention on the 10th of each month come hail or high water. Always. Now? Eh, he gets it within a week or so of the 10th. I hesitate to say that I've completely mellowed out [hello, DNA is DNA], but compared to where I was at on the spectrum, I can say that I am more mellow.
There were times throughout the year when I had to purposely distance myself from my comfort zone. It was tough and a little lonely at times, but I learned that the cattiness and gossip and pessimism that we all by nature have the tendency to thrive on is really not worth it. It's always at the expense of someone else. And words, they really do hurt. I have by no means mastered this, but I hope that I'm doing better. Never fear, my trademark eyerolls are still an innate component of my sunny disposition.
This is the year that I finally began to understand what I've always known: this life, while it's mine to live, it's not all about me. Another huge step outside of my comfort zone included me beginning to volunteer at church. When it comes to church, I am a champ at holding down the pew. But gravity does that job well enough, so now I am a greeter. I didn't think I was quite up to the pressure of teaching big concepts to little minds [I mean elementary school kiddos, not narrow-minded adults], but I can certainly smile and hand out bulletins to folks. Except for that Sunday when I dropped a whole stack of them right in the doorway as the masses were piling into the auditorium. It's how I roll.
Until 2011, I would have been perfectly content completely erasing the two previous years from my memory. But this was the year that I began to make some meaning from the chaotic roller coaster ride. Parts of those years will never make sense, but I've discovered that meaning can still be made from senselessness. It is not always the circumstance that shapes up, but our response to the circumstance.
Speaking of making sense and meaning, one thing [of many things] that I know that I will never understand is how much God loves me. It doesn't make sense that he loves me because hello, have you been around me at 1:00 in the afternoon on the days when I didn't eat my mid-morning snack? Queen Cranky-Pants. But he loves me nonetheless. Even when I betray him, he still loves me. Once upon a time long ago when I had a single gray hair instead of the 3 that I have now, I still loved someone for a little while in the immediate aftermath of discovering I had been betrayed. From that experience, I was finally able to connect the dots many moons later and realize that daily I sin and betray God. Daily he loves me. Even when I'm at my crankiest. Truly, it makes no sense. It doesn't make sense to us because humans do not have the capacity to love as God does -even though we're commanded to do so. If catching even a small glimpse of God's love for me was the primary outcome of the event that over time has transformed from something so big to simply a blip in my life story, then I am glad that we do not have the ability to completely erase our memory or periods in life.
All years link together and our past is the foundation to our future. I really do look at 2011 as a critical link in the story that is Just Me...HP. It has helped me to see where I've been while shaping and preparing me for where I'm headed. While we are all different and we all have different lives, our lives are all very much the same. We have mountain top moments and experiences. We trudge through the pit of despair. We have calm in the middle. It's in the quiet that we hear most clearly. Don't fill these moments with empty noise. It's in the calm that we can see even the smallest movement. Keep your head up and your eyes open.
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