You count it strange, so once did I.

The year is ending.

I have a million words I could use to describe 2007: unexpected, epiphanic, painful, pitiful, renewing, rejuvenating, regressing, digressing, and progressing. One word, however, to sum it all up: emotional.

For better or worse, in joyfulness and sadness, in love and hate, in death and life, in comfort and fear, in physical pain and emotional pain and physical healing and emotional healing, it’s been emotional. I have injured and been injured. I have loved and been loved. I have lost and been lost. I have found and been found. Relationships have been destroyed, rejected, cherished, formed, severed, repaired, and resolved. I’ve cried tears of happiness, tears of gratitude, tears of repenting and relenting and remorse. I’ve cried in anger and heartache and confusion and frustration and exhaustion. I’ve used an insane amount of Kleenex and shirt sleeves. I’ve cried so much this morning alone my face is swollen and my eyelids feel like sandpaper against my eyes. I don’t think I’ve cried this much since 1996.

Now, after all this, I’m to the point (and I’ve mentioned the same, months ago) where I get choked up repeatedly, constantly. I can’t make it through a church service without tears. I can rarely make it through a shift at work without tears. Even in my psychology class or listening to sermons on my walk to and from classes, I get teary-eyed or choked up.

The Great Epiphany of this morning is: if all this heartache and drama and trauma is what it took to return me to Christ, it’s all worth it. All this and more. I sit around and feel sorry for myself and think, “I deserve more than this,” but in truth, I don’t.

To be frank, this is personal. So personal I had no intention of sharing any of this with the World Wide Web. I feel uncomfortable sometimes being too serious. I have a lighthearted post partially written and sitting idle on my desktop, but I have to keep it for later. For now, I have to tell everyone about God’s grace. I have to shout it to the world, online and on mountain tops. I want every single person to experience what I’ve experienced and know–really and truly know–God’s greatness and grace. It’s indescribable and incomprehensible, but it’s there all the same. I have been forgiven, so I can forgive. I have been loved, so I can love.

God is so, so good.

To all of you reading this, whether or not we believe the same, just know I’m praying for you. I have been, and I will continue to do so.

Peace, Love, and God’s Grace to you all.

By: jane | 2007/12/09 | TGTE™ - jesus loves us - random | Trackback | Comments [RSS 2.0]

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wolvie

Comment by wolvie | 2007/12/09 at 20:49:17

I’ll have to agree with the summation that 2007 was emotional, since that’s pretty much what it’s been for me as well.

I had the largest of fights with my best friend of many, many years, to the point of him leaving our apartment and never coming back. After many fighting words, I bit the bullet a month or so later and took the steps to reconcile. It worked, but our relationship will never be the same.

I’ve had three of my friends get married: the first being my ex-girlfriend, the second being my previously mentioned friend, and the third one of my friends that went to a different country for a year, returning with a bride. The first marriage was possibly the hardest day of my life, and possibly for her as well, because lack of love was never the reason for why our relationship ended. It still exists to this day, and possibly will always last into our next lives. The second marriage was the most jovial of them all, being up in the mountains for a day or so, with much revelry, drinking, tea ceremonies, and other such activities. The third was the most traditional religious-wise, which was rather interesting to take a part of, especially being a lesbian pagan in a Christian marriage ceremony. It’s all good, though.

It’s been the year of finally trying to reconcile the differences between myself and the aforementioned ex-girlfriend. We had built up a large wall between ourselves for 4 years, mostly out of fear of what would happen if we allowed each other to get so close to each other again. Two weeks after her ceremony, though, I wrote a long letter to her, which pretty much acted as a sledgehammer to break down at least part of the wall that we’ve been building. She now knows that we need to break down this wall, and has grasped the sledgehammer as well, in an effort to break down all of the barriers between us and rebuild something that mutually benefits us all.

I’ve tried to build myself into a better person. I’ve made my own company. I’ve created some more websites. I quit my old job and joined a really high-powered, extremely technical job that demands a lot of my attention, knowledge, and willpower. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’ve sinned. Oh, how I’ve sinned. I’ve done things that I’ve told myself I’ll never do. I’ve given into carnal pleasures that I’ve never thought imaginable, and still glorify in it somehow. I’m been tempted, and I’ve been the temptress. I’ve been pursued, and I’ve been the pursuer. I’ve awakened monsters in others, as well as myself. I’ve allowed others to get in touch with parts of themselves that they’ve needed to get to, to release them from their minds and their bodies so that they can live whatever life they need to live, or at least focus on for the short term.

I’ve crashed. Crashed hard. I crashed so hard that I’ve ended up in the ER, looking through 5am-blurred eyes at self-inflicted wounds. I’ve crashed so hard that they have medication for it. I’ve crashed so hard that I’ve been on short-term disability leave. I’ve crashed so hard that one of my co-workers thought I was in a car accident.

This year will end in only 20-some-odd days, and it makes me wonder what 2008 will bring. Will companies flourish? What will happen with the various odd projects that I’ve been working on? Will my lusts finally be satisfied, or at least resolved? Will I finally find a woman to spend the rest of my life with? Will my breakdown finally fade away into nothingness? Will I finally discover my spiritual roots?

All I know is that the answers will come, and it’s only my job to experience them and learn as I go.