Into the New Year

It’s almost a new year and I can’t help but to look back at previous New Years and realize how much I’ve changed.

I remember a time, not too many years ago, when the most important thing to me was to celebrate with my friends and kiss my date at midnight. To me, that was the perfect way to celebrate the beginning of a new year.

I’ve often heard it said that the way you spend the first day of the year, is an indication of how the rest of your year will go. …A perfect excuse for me to make sure I had a date. Not like those saints who spend the biggest party night in church at midnight. Sunrise service…really? That was not for me, at all. And tradition or superstition, many Americans eat black eyed peas on the first day of the year.

Now, I choose to spend my New Year’s Eve reflecting on the past, the things that I hoped to have accomplished, the things that I did accomplish and meditating on what I hoped for in the next 12 months. I stay in prayer and ask God to guide me and increase my ability to hear Him and follow without doubt or hesitation.

To me, New Year’s Day is the perfect opportunity to re-launch dreams and goals. I find that when I have a huge goal, it’s best for me to divide it up into smaller goals that will get me to the larger one, and assign deadlines to each one. Then, I put the deadlines on a digital calendar, so an alarm will alert me when the deadline is coming up.

While it’s true that I, like many people, tend to fall short of some long-term goals, I do make several positive steps along the way and I get closer to my goals each year.

And maybe the most important part of the resolution is not the goal, but the journey, because sometimes I learn as much trying to make the short deadlines, as I do in achieving my goal.

But, however you decide to spend New Year’s Eve, I hope you resolve to make the most of the next 364 days.

...We Get Up

It may seem that I fell off the side of the earth, almost as soon as I got started blogging. And I do apologize for that. I've had several growing experiences in the past year and I thank God for the experiences that He's blessed me with. As the song goes, "We fall down, but we get up." And, I'm back up and running. Okay, not so much running, but moving and shaking anyway. It was about a year ago that my life was introduced to new challenges.

Those challenges included issues at work, issues with my family and issues within my social life. The issues were typical life circumstances. But, they came around a time when health issues that I had for several years continued to get worse. Then despite the awesome start I had at the beginning of 2008, twelve months later, I was diagnosed with Lupus.

The diagnosis itself didn't set me back. Though, it took me a while to accept that this is what I have. The pain and fatigue had been getting progressively worse. I began to narrow my responsibilities down to what I actually had to take care of. Well, temporarily... until I could group and refocus. Which leads me to today.

My plan is to focus on the things that I can do and leave the rest to God. The year has been a lesson in endurance, faith and patience. And though there have been times that I fell down, I'm back up. And, I hope that in itself can be a lesson for me to fall back on - in the future - to help me a long my journey. But more so, a lesson for others to be blessed with when they're faced with life's challenges... And to be blessed with a closer Father-daughter relationship, as I have been. Be sure to come back and visit www.wovn.org in the future, to get information on my Into the Light event, in April 2009.

I wish you peace, love and joy!