2015

I've always loved looking back at the previous year. Seeing where I came from and what the new year will hold. However this year was a hard year. It was heart breaking and life changing. It hurt deeply and broke me in ways I didn't know were possible.

Back in January I was 22 and just entering into my last semester of college. The previous semester I took off to care for my father but since he got on hospice I had a little more time for school. I was applying for an internship with InterVarsity  for when I graduated and I didn't know what was going on. When things get crazy my type A personality kicks in and I try to do it all and be it all, that is until I crash and burn later. I was going to do it all.

By the time April came I was terrified to leave for my spring break trip to Campus by the Sea at Catalina Island. Would this be when my father passed? The week challenged me in my faith. And my father still had a few months with us. Later that month I lost my job as part of a major company layoff. I didn't get the internship for InterVarsity. I graduated college with a bittersweet view of the world knowing I had no plan, no where to go, and my loving father slowly dying. So I did all I knew how to do, be a type A and get busy again.

In July I went to serve at Grace Haven Bible Camp. That came with its own set of struggles and hate as the local church had only now heard that I identify as a homosexual women, with whatever God has for me in that. I had nowhere to go after camp, a family that was so hurt and trying to savor what short time we had left with my father, and what I perceived as a vicious battle around my identity and faith in Christ. I broke down deeply there and. But God used that hate to show me a love that would stand up for me and care for me and it drew me close to Him.

That August my father passed away. I write about this almost coldly to keep from tearing up (which isn't working great). While we were relieved there was no more suffering, there was a huge empty space there. A space of love, protection, authority, and faith. I was stuck. The world just seemed to keep moving. So I got busy again.

At the end of August I got a job teaching special education at Franklin Elementary School in Provo, UT. It was a beautiful thing for me. I was able to see children who hadn't yet seen pain or learned hate. And some who had seen and learned for more than I. But I was able to be there for them and to extend their sense of wonder about the world. It has been an amazing job that is truly healing to my soul.

The end of this year has simply been learning to breathe again. Learning to hope again. Learning to be with people again. It is hard, it is loud, it is challenging, but it is goid. So as I head into a new year I look behind in sadness, wanting to both run away as well as to stay there forever, in the last year with my father.

But time moves and so must we. So this year I have two resolutions. They are bright and shining like the new day.

1. Be a hostage of hope
       Begin to hope beyond reason. Know that everything will be allright. We will experience freedom and joy again. This is the hope that is given to us by Jesus Christ and let me be a hostage to it.

2. Wonder
        The way a tree can grow, the way a child begins to understand and learn, the way a human heart can forgive and feel joy. These are things we take for granted. But how much beauty and wonder is hidden there. Stand in wonder of what God can do to a human heart.

No matter what comes or where God leads me in 2016 I ask that I would be full of wonder and a hostage to hope.