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Twenty Fourteen

So i’m a few days late with my new year post. It’s just been one of those months (years?)

but i’m back. At least until the next time I get overwhelmed with everything and let the blog go.

But really, hopefully, that doesn’t happen anytime soon. That’s kind of the point of this post – looking ahead to new things, new goals, new starts. I love this time of year for that reason. I know some people are so against the smarmy cliche’s of “resolutions” or “goal-setting” or fresh starts. Not me. It’s part of what makes this whole new year thing exciting. It IS a new start – a fresh blank page, a clean slate. All stretched out before you. What are you gonna do with it?

It’s hard to look too far forward without at least a little glance backwards.20131222_200214000_iOS

2013 was tough. It made ME tough. It showed me how tough my kendall is, all my kids, my whole family. It showed me that my family will always be there for me and it proved to me that friendships hang tough. Celebrating New Year’s of 2013, we had just gotten out of the hospital, and were packing up for our trip to Disney. it had been a rough last half of 2012, and we needed this quick getaway to celebrate all we had lived through. Oh how little we knew what lie ahead…

It is hard to find the words through the tears that come rushing to my eyes as I try to pick and choose other moments of 2013. All I can really say in summation is to not take a single moment for granted. You just never know what the next hour, or day, or week could bring. I know life is frustrating, I know times are tough, I know it is easier to just yell at the kids than to take the time to look them in the eye and find out what’s really wrong – I know all this because I live it. I have also lived the other side – the side where I’ve watched too many friends bury their babies, where I myself have sat bedside vigil begging for just one more opportunity to watch her make that mess or destroy my office.

So I enter 2014 a changed person. Hopefully changed for the better. I hope it hasn’t made me more cynical, too sharp, too critical. I hope I can carry those hard-earned and hard-learned lessons of slowing down, enjoying and living in the moment, appreciating the small things all forward with me. I hope I can multiply them and pass them on to others around me somehow.

Do I have goals or resolutions? Sure. But mostly I just want to LIVE. Learn what life is and soak it up in all it’s goodness – knowing as I do that with the sweet must come some bitter, with the good comes some bad, with the highs come some lows. I could stand to lose 70 or so pounds, work out more, eat less junk food (eat less questionably food-safe food), do all that happy horsecaca. And I do want to do all that. But I hope it just comes along naturally with where I am at in life. I’m learning to accept that my life is such that I will not have a regular time to work out, and I rarely have time to plan/buy for/prepare good healthy meals. I can only do what I can do on each day. I can only be mindful of making the best smartest choices I can right then and there for that day.

So that’s where I’m at for this first week of 2014. Looking ahead with a lot of high hopes. Optimistically looking forward to making some positive changes and seeing some awesome things come about as a result of them.  My biggest hope for this year is that we are once again blessed to close out the year all together as a family. I hope that doesn’t sound too overdramatic. I guess it’s just where my heart is at tonight – knowing that this year was the year that almost wasn’t, and rejoicing in the miracle that made it what it was. Holding on to the hope that spurs us onward every day, the Hope in which our faith and trust resides.

I have high hopes for myself in 2014. I hope it is a good year for you too.
My picture above is of a Christmas decoration my mom has up. It sits on the counter between her kitchen and her TV room. If you read it the right way, it says “Joy”. If you read it looking backwards, it appears to read (according to my brother who sees the world through his own weird colored glasses) “YOLO” – You Only Live Once.
That about sums it up. Joy, and YOLO. My wishes for you, for all of us.

Keep on Keepin On~

Terra.

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