Hope

I love love love the end of an old year and the beginning of a new one. Feels like an accomplishment somehow... Closure, with new possibilities and opportunities coming soon. 

I usually try to spend some time toward the end of the year digging thru my journal and remembering (in thorough detail...) what the year encompassed, what I've learned, and marveling at how my perspective has changed. 

This past year (well, 18 months...) God and I talked a lot about fear and hope. I felt like God had already done a lot in my heart to remove cynicism, fear, and deep hurts I held... and then He started to show me that there are still so many areas in my life that I feel hopeless, and I've allowed fear to rule my decisions, thoughts, and motives. 

It's almost like in a garden... There are certain plants that just take over. My mom had tiger lilies that just went crazy one summer and started choking out the rest of the plants in her gardens. I remember seeing her trim them back, even to the point of leaving just a few plants, but they always grew back with ferocity. It wasn't until she took out all of the plants and uprooted the bulbs that the rest of the garden was able to grow in, healthy and full. 

Fear works a lot like those tiger lilies. When God and I took a good hard look at my life and my heart, I began to realize there was this whole underground mess of tangled "Fear roots"... I had only ever noticed it when something would poke thru to the surface in different areas, but the truth was that I had allowed fear to sneak in and stealthily influence so much of my life!! 

It's actually kind of funny how shocked I was, realizing that. I don't generally think of myself as a fearful person... I speak my mind most of the time, I don't shy away from public speaking, I enjoy people (most of the time)... 

But the thing about deception is that it's sneaky. If it was obvious, it wouldn't be a problem. (Duh! right? haha...). 

And so began (and still continues) some serious gardening... :)

So! To begin this year, I will be reviewing snippets from the past 18 months or so. Combing thru my journal has been such a powerful time of remembering for me, and I'm hoping that it'll be somewhat of a window into my life (for friends/family/etc. who are far away). I've also been learning the beauty, freedom, and strength to be found in being transparent. We're all living life trying to figure out how to love and be loved, and, while I'm not even close to having everything figured out, I am learning so much along the way that I'm excited to share! :)

And who knows!? Maybe this will be the beginning of consistent blogging from yours truly... :) It's worth a shot!