Phoenix

The end has come.

Today marks the end of 2011. And the end of the first year of my blogging.

Looking back, as we tend to do on this day, this year has seen much in my life.

Change. That's a certain.

A New 'Normal' - of which I am never certain.

Checkmarks made on lists:

Debts

Projects

Traumas.

Endings. All the time sad yet often needed in order to grow.

Beginnings. Filled with the wonderment of possibility and hope.

All in all it's been a good year. Every day that I am blessed with breath in my lungs and a voice to share Love is a good day, whether I embrace those opportunities or not.

About four years ago, I remember being in the heat of struggle with marriage and finances and worries. And I remember thinking, and (regrettably, sharing) that I believed that I was simply a speck in the wonder of creation; that I believed God loved mankind but not necessarily the individual that I am, and I was simply a small, insignificant part of His creation for which He had died.

I have now come to believe that He took that as a personal challenge. To pursue me with a vengeance so passionately, so desperately, so relentlessly that I would go from believing myself to be an insignificant speck to knowing in my soul that I am His favorite.

And I am. :)

And as a result, my goal has been to live my life sharing that Love. I fail more often than I succeed. But, the sad truth is that few on this earth experience the revelation of His Love the way that I have. And that, dear friends, is our whole purpose on this planet. To know Him. To know that Love.

And to embrace it. Revel in it. Prance around in exuberance of it.

That is my life's goal. To share that Love with all that I meet. To share my journey and oftentimes weird thinking so that I may point to Him.

He's taken me from the ashes, the tomb, and declared me Victorious and filled with Purpose.

If He can do that with me, flawed and frail and selfish as I am, He most certainly can - and will - do it with anyone.

Some years have passed and I have been filled with praise to see them go (2009 was that year for me). But 2011 is different. I had declared it, in January, to be "my year." And it has ended much differently than I had thought it would. Plans I made did not come to fruition. The road to my future now has taken a much different path than I had anticipated. Yet, the Fingerprints of my Great Love are written all over it. I am blessed. I am changed.

I am Victorious.