As I start to craft this post there are less than 12 hours left in this year. I debated whether or not to add to the blogosphere’s bloated offerings of end-of-year reflections. But when my friend referenced this site in HER wonderful end-of-year post, I thought I’d better at least have a little fresh content here.

Some times you need a  bit of motivation.

I didn’t have anything in particular to share. Then I thought I should look at the wordcloud on my site and see what themes bubbled to the top this year.

Faith. Forgiveness. God. Hardships. Lessons. Love. Perseverance. Trials.

What do you know? That about sums it up!

This has been a year of “Life.” There have been exhilarating highs and stomach-churning lows. There have been an abundance of trials – like the 7-month unemployment of my fiancee-turned-husband – and in the trials there has been the call to trust God. Jeremiah 29:11 (“I know the plans I have for you….”) and Romans 8:28 (“God causes all things to work together for good….”)  have always been part of the “three-legged stool” on which I lean. This year they were promises to which I clung.

I learned to trust God in new ways this year.

We celebrated births and weddings. We mourned with friends who lost loved ones. We celebrated victories large and small – like baseball games and restored relationships and cancer-free diagnoses. We learned to live more leanly and to understand the differences between “wants” and “needs.” (Truthfully, my teenagers are still working on that one.) We learned that forgiveness is powerful and bitterness is poisonous.

We encouraged and we were encouraged. We loved and we were loved.

My husband just asked me what I was writing – and I said, “I don’t know. It’s kind of all jumbled up.” He said, “Well, it’s been that kind of year.”

It has.

We did “life” this year. The road has not been as smooth as we would have liked. But the rough patches held valuable lessons. We learned that with God all things ARE possible. He does in fact have a plan and a purpose. When you seek Him you WILL find Him. We learned that perseverance through trials produces amazing fruit – like patience and trust. We learned that “success” is not something to strive for – but significance is. You can be significant in your every day actions and have an impact that no worldly measure of success would ever afford.

We learned that faith, hope, and love are in fact the most important things. And the greatest of these is love.