Reflections of a year gone by...

This picture was taken on this day a year ago.  I was laying in the bed with Madie really thinking that I was missing something...pondering what my purpose was...was I accomplishing anything professionally...was I a good momma...a good wife...had I made the right choices in my life. I couldn't wrap my head around what it was that was missing.  I felt this giant sized hole somewhere, but for the life of me couldn't figure out what it was that I needed to fill it.  A year later I don't claim to have the answer to that question, but truly feel that I am a heck of a lot closer than I was on this day a year ago.  

I can remember as a child thinking that a year was a millennium and that Christmas would never come.  I can remember my grandmother saying, "wait until you get to be my age and the years will just fly by."  As with just about everything she ever tells me, she was exactly right.  A year has a way these days of just flying by and what we do with that blink is up to us.  I have been very transparent that this year for me was one I was all to happy to be saying goodbye to.  The woman in that picture is almost unrecognizable to me for what was going on behind those eyes.  The searching that my heart was doing, and in all the wrong places for the most part, almost drove me crazy.  (My sweet Dennie might even say I was crazy there for a little while...okay maybe a lot of whiles.)  All the while God was working on my heart...working on me to mold me into what I couldn't wrap my head around was possible.  Someone who could just sit and be present...someone who get out of my head long enough to let Him speak to my heart.  His gentle, sometimes not so gentle, pulling and stretching and molding was painful.  It was hard.  It was life wrecking.  In the end it is beautiful and transforming.  

As I look to the things to come in 2016 I am so thankful for that painful and beautiful transformation that only my Savior can have the credit for.  I have truly been taught in this last year how to let go and let God.  To truly open my hands, even when that means losing the grasp on something I thought I wanted and needed, to have the availability for something much bigger and better.  I learned to spend a lot more time in His word to have the armor necessary to battle the enemy in the daily assaults that are sure to be thrown my way.  I gained the confidence to know that as long as I faithfully listen to His calling and am prayerful in my decisions allowing Him to light my path I will never go wrong.  As I move into my Ephesians 3:20 year I absolutely believe that 2015 was a Romans 8:28 year and that all these things...however painful they may have been...will work together for good because I love God and know that I am called according to His purpose.  That my friends is the BIGGEST blessing of all!   

Ephesians 3:20-21
Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever!  Amen!