2006: What a wild year

A year ago today, I said in my retrospective of 2005 that that year had "went all over the map, and sometimes drove straight off of it." If that's the case, then 2006 not only went off the map, it mutilated it before burning what was left.

I've been looking over all the posts made during this past year and it's really something: you can actually see me changing as a person, almost right before your very eyes, across this past year. A lot of things that I wrote a year ago, I doubt if I would have written those things today. But they're going to stay up: I don't believe in tailoring the past to accommodate convenience in the present. Whatever flaws I've revealed in myself as a person with this blog are staying put... because I've enough confidence that God is going to let me surpass them.

Speaking of which, I think the biggest thing I learned this past year is to put my faith in God as much as I can, and to trust where He's leading... because what He has in store for us is always a lot better and more interesting than anything we could do on our own.

I didn't write about this at the time but I will now: toward the end of this past January, I lost a job that I was really enjoying. I still don't understand fully why that happened.

And it did devastate me for awhile... but only for awhile. I let it bring me down only so much and then I said "okay, God, where do You want me? I leave it all up to You. I'm tired of leaning on my own understanding anymore. From now on You put me where You want me to be according to Your will, not my own."

Well, what happened after that, I can only call a miracle. I got a better job, one that I enjoy even more than I did the last one. We were able to move to a better place. A lot of good things started happening. And then like a bolt out of the blue, without me ever intending to do it at all, I wound up running for school board... and did amazingly well when the votes came in, all things considered.

I started 2006 with some hope and optimism. That was wrong. I was putting too much faith in myself. And God brought me down for it in short order. But when I started putting my faith in Him, He began doing amazing things.

So I'm not going to make any boasts about this coming year. Except that I do want to rely on God's will and His grace more than I ever have before in my life.

What else can be said of 2006? Lisa and I made some great new friendships (we are really looking forward to visiting Jenna Olwin sometime this coming year 'cuz she has become not just a terrific friend but an amazing sister in the Lord). We re-kindled some old ones. We traveled a bit... and speaking of which, in 2006 I finally got to do something that I'd wanted to do for almost fifteen years. I made a short film that a lot of people seem to have thought was funny. Then I went completely over the top and made a schoolhouse explode in one of my campaign ads. We got to see some friends get married. On at least one occasion I looked into the face of pure evil. I saw a lot of movies and reviewed them here: some good and some outright stinkers.

Whichever way you cut it, this past year was a little bit of everything.

And I'm trying hard not to look forward to 2007. Just want to accept whatever God brings in His time. I've no doubt that it will be something wonderful.

Here's to hoping and praying that we all have a Happy New Year in 2007 :-)