Grateful

Well, it's been a while since my last post. Missed a week in there. This weekend has been great catching up a little with family I don't always spend a lot of time with.

Isn't it interesting what different things people notice about you? And how it is so often closely associated with what has changed since the last time they saw you. Now, this makes sense, but it also really highlights how infrequently you do see some people. One of my nieces whom I saw this weekend noticed my blue hair. I could have sworn that I had seen her at least once in the last nine months, but apparently, no.

 

Time really slips away from us sometimes. But at the same time I am sometimes grateful for those long absences as these people can point out things about yourself that have changed that you or others close to you might not have noticed.

We are always changing in some degree, often to our circumstances. I know at the moment I am changing in more ways than one but I cannot pin point what those changes are. Perhaps someone else I see one day might be able to point them out to me.

This is just one thing I am grateful for from those around me. What are you grateful for from those around you?

New Year

tick. 3. tick. 2. tick. 1. tick...

It is but a moment yet it can mean so much. What were you doing as midnight ticked over this New Years Eve to herald in the year of 2011? Perhaps you were asleep insistant that it is just another day. Perhaps you were out with friends enjoying the chance to celebrate. Perhaps you were at home with family. Perhaps you were on your own.

I do not know how your year has begun but this I can say.. how my year began! A lot has happened throughout 2010 and there is a lot to look forward to in 2011.. a lot that I know of, and even more that I do not know. More than anything in each coming year the thing I look forward to the most is what God has in store for me, what it is that he will teach me, and how through that I will come closer to him yet still.

This year as it began I was travelling, on my own, towards a celebration with friends. While it was slightly disheartening not to be there that little bit earlier I would not change it for the world. As it was getting closer to that moment in time I was reflecting on all that had happened, all that I had learnt in that year, and as that moment in time passed I was in prayer.

For all that has been since the beginning of time, for all that God has done, for the year just been, and the yera to come, for those around me, those whom are close and those not quite so much - and those whom I am yet to meet, for all the bad times and the good times, and in everything I am thankful and in everything I asked that it would be for Him, and through Him, with Him as our guide that we may stand and move forward to embrace the unknown of the year ahead and what it has in store for us all.

I know some people who try to give each year a label at the beginning.. the year of fulfillment, the year of fun, the year of negativity, the year of continued pretended normality. Well following this I thought I would give this year a label.

2011.. the year of PRAISE amidst many CHANGES.