A New Year, A Grateful Outlook

As I sit in my lovely living room, the Jim Brickman station playing softly in the background, curtains drawn, a cup of tea (yes, in a teacup) and the beautifully lit Christmas tree in front of me, it feels more like early morning than almost 11:00 AM. Of course, the magic of the moment keeps being rudely interrupted by my need to blow my nose. Dratted colds. But that is the besides the point. The point is, my husband, during evening prayers last night, thanked God for several things over the last year that left me in a reflective mood even to this morning. God has so blessed me!

Last year, and even the year before, were full of fun and joy, and I welcome the year stretching before me with open arms. How different from the years before I met my husband, where years stretched before me with pain and trial, and the constant prayer that God would get me through. How it was worth going through those years to get to these happy ones! Years where I want for nothing, where I live in the capital of the free world, where I can afford, without any injury to myself, to send money to my family! This, this is what I dreamt about and prayed for all those years going through college, working three jobs, taking 18 credits, not eating because I couldn’t afford or didn’t have time for food, watching my bank account drop to $1.50 and praying for another babysitting job so I could make the next bill. Crying tears of joy in my car after that babysitting job did come through and God moved on them to give me a few extra dollars, which would allow me to just make my next car payment.

Oh, I am not bemoaning those years – by no means! Nor the years before, when I watched my family go through more suffering than any family should and worked to put food on the table for my family while my mom tried to find help for my dad’s dreadful chronic condition. No, I believe going through that is what made me into who I am, what gave me strength to work my way through the world and put myself through college and find a good job, what laid such a strong foundation for trusting Him, for knowing that no matter how bad things appeared, He always came through. So, for that, I am grateful. But for what He has now blessed me with, I am even more thankful -and so much more thankful than I would have known to be had I not gone though the trials first.

So, enough of my poetic reflections. 🙂 Highlights of my last year!

1. A free cruise to the bahamas!

2. The swim-up bar at the all-inclusive resort in the Dominican Republic (the trip for our first anniversary).

3. Paying off multiple credit cards!

4. Getting a job I love! (so far, at least! 🙂 )

5. Getting curtains for our new apartment!

6. Last night, seeing my American girl dolls, Felicity and Samantha, dressed in their Christmas best by the Christmas tree. Now how is that for a childhood dream come true?

As if you haven’t had enough of my rambling, I am not done yet. I did, for once, create goals for the New Year! And, for the first time in my life, I didn’t create them based off of everyone asking me if I was doing any New Year goals! I created them because I wanted to!

1. Lose 30 pounds. I have gained so much weight since meeting Daniel, which is probably due to actually eating, that it is now time to get back down to an ideal weight, though, per entreaties from friends and families and comments about how unhealthy I looked, I am not going to go back to the 120 I weighed when Daniel and I started dating. Instead I am aiming for a more natural 130.

2. Complete my novel A Picture of the Past. I mean complete as in, completed and edited – ready to be submitted to a publisher if I should so choose.

3. Make money writing. I know, I know, very general. Mostly goals should be quite narrow and easy to measure, but this one is different for me. The truth is, I don’t know what a reasonable number to put would be. What I want, is to begin submitting stories to contests and articles for freelance and see what happens, with the intention of giving myself an idea of how hard it would be to make a good living writing if I were to do it full-time. Not to say I am not grateful for the job I do have! I am! And I intend to work it for a minimum of a year, probably two! But that doesn’t change the fact that writing for a living has been my dream since I was 8 years old, and Daniel and I have discussed many times how feasible it would be to make it work. So I figure, if I can make any money writing while I work full time, maybe it will give me an idea of what to expect.

I feel like I should make a fourth goal, like a financial or other more responsible adult-ish goal, but I don’t really feel like it. Besides, Daniel and I already have our financial goals, set shortly after we married! And, with his recent raise, and my new job, it looks like we are back on track to meeting our goal of being completely debt free by the end of 2018! So I will leave it at that.

You will all be relieved to know that I am now done rambling and ready to release you back to your own New Year!

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and God bless us, every one!