A Very Full Year
A synopsis of my 2011 year in point form:
January - Grand-daughter Anna is born = great celebration
February - Speaking 'freedom' to 100 women = out of the ball-park success
March - Into my own place after the breakup of my 23 year marriage = bittersweet relief
April - months of effort conclude in Defying Expectations Conference = simply stunning day
May - Anna dies of crib death = profound sorrow
June, July & August - a blur of grief and ill health = focus on healing
September - Trying to rebuild a business put aside for most of the year = head banging effort
October - Committed to a trip to Uganda = huge shift of heart and life
November - Trip to Uganda = incredible privilege and releasing of 30 years vision
December - Ill with measles and malaria = resting and silence
What does one do with a year like this?
What I do know is that the fullness of life is represented in this year of mine.
All of the good and bad, from the very heights to the very depths have been a part. My heart retains the fullness of this year. It is part of what fashions passion and intention and deliberation of years to come.
What I haven't included in my synopsis is the healing to my body that I've experienced this year. My absence epilepsy that I've had since I was 9 years old is gone. Prayed away in the power of God and the faithfulness to simply keep on asking for healing. Wow and Amen!
What does one do with a year like this?
Additionally: I've not eaten wheat for some eight or nine years. The one time I tried a touch of bread product in May of this year, my legs and ankles and feet swelled twice their normal size, and it was six weeks till the swelling went away.
Come a few short weeks prior to the trip to Uganda, I sensed God was telling me that I could now eat wheat for I was being healed. It was the same week that Geoffrey in Uganda was fasting and praying, and added to that week of profound ah-ha's and added wisdom, to further inner healing of heart and soul, was added this healing of wheat and gluten.
I've had wheat every single day since, with not one side-effect, with my rheumatoid arthritis disappearing as well (they are related after all).
So what does one do with a year like this?
I've also not included the profound presence of God the week Anna died. That week we were all given a larger lens by which to see life. A larger heart by which to take the good with the bad and still declare God good.
The sting of death was removed by the gracious, profound and deep presence of God. A God who knows all things and keeps all things and by whom we can know and be kept as we tuck into God closer and closer.
What does one do with a year like this?
Neither does this synopsis show the healing of my broken heart. With an easy two-thirds of my marriage an ever-present and continuous declaration (through both words, decisions and actions), from my ex of, "I don't like you and I really want nothing to do with you."
I only recently realized that my heart was broken. Has been broken for some 15 years, and without having the words to put to it till now... How is that possible?
And yet, in the distance created since the end of such craziness, I see clearly that the illness's of body and soul that plagued me over the years were simply the results and outworking of a broken heart.
Today, it is mending and mostly mended. 2011 has been a year of releasing last vestiges of bitterness, of appreciation of what was good, and of letting go and saying good-bye from the deepest recesses of my heart.
Blessed and bittersweet and in its own way, I now know profound gladness to have lived through the deepest rejection possible and come through strong and solid and tall of heart and spirit. I am simply stronger for it, and in a weird sort of way, thankful for it.
What does one do with a year like this?
What I do know, is once we've faced the very worst things, with our hearts cracked open wide, all we have left is courage and authenticity and a blank canvas of life to come, by which we are more equipped than ever before to dance and to celebrate and to sorrow and grieve.
There is not one without the other in this life.
Today, as I write this blog I find out that the new grand-baby my daughter is carrying is a boy.
Dorian is his name.
We welcome you little Dorian. We are eagerly and with much delight awaiting your arrival.
2012, we welcome you as well, with all the good and the bad that this next year might bring, we will simply come out the other side stronger of mind and body, heart and soul.
Quite simply, God, we thank-you for life, the good the bad and the ugly, and your presence in it; and we invite you into our 2012's.
January - Grand-daughter Anna is born = great celebration
February - Speaking 'freedom' to 100 women = out of the ball-park success
March - Into my own place after the breakup of my 23 year marriage = bittersweet relief
April - months of effort conclude in Defying Expectations Conference = simply stunning day
May - Anna dies of crib death = profound sorrow
June, July & August - a blur of grief and ill health = focus on healing
September - Trying to rebuild a business put aside for most of the year = head banging effort
October - Committed to a trip to Uganda = huge shift of heart and life
November - Trip to Uganda = incredible privilege and releasing of 30 years vision
December - Ill with measles and malaria = resting and silence
What does one do with a year like this?
What I do know is that the fullness of life is represented in this year of mine.
All of the good and bad, from the very heights to the very depths have been a part. My heart retains the fullness of this year. It is part of what fashions passion and intention and deliberation of years to come.
What I haven't included in my synopsis is the healing to my body that I've experienced this year. My absence epilepsy that I've had since I was 9 years old is gone. Prayed away in the power of God and the faithfulness to simply keep on asking for healing. Wow and Amen!
What does one do with a year like this?
Additionally: I've not eaten wheat for some eight or nine years. The one time I tried a touch of bread product in May of this year, my legs and ankles and feet swelled twice their normal size, and it was six weeks till the swelling went away.
Come a few short weeks prior to the trip to Uganda, I sensed God was telling me that I could now eat wheat for I was being healed. It was the same week that Geoffrey in Uganda was fasting and praying, and added to that week of profound ah-ha's and added wisdom, to further inner healing of heart and soul, was added this healing of wheat and gluten.
I've had wheat every single day since, with not one side-effect, with my rheumatoid arthritis disappearing as well (they are related after all).
So what does one do with a year like this?
I've also not included the profound presence of God the week Anna died. That week we were all given a larger lens by which to see life. A larger heart by which to take the good with the bad and still declare God good.
The sting of death was removed by the gracious, profound and deep presence of God. A God who knows all things and keeps all things and by whom we can know and be kept as we tuck into God closer and closer.
What does one do with a year like this?
Neither does this synopsis show the healing of my broken heart. With an easy two-thirds of my marriage an ever-present and continuous declaration (through both words, decisions and actions), from my ex of, "I don't like you and I really want nothing to do with you."
I only recently realized that my heart was broken. Has been broken for some 15 years, and without having the words to put to it till now... How is that possible?
And yet, in the distance created since the end of such craziness, I see clearly that the illness's of body and soul that plagued me over the years were simply the results and outworking of a broken heart.
Today, it is mending and mostly mended. 2011 has been a year of releasing last vestiges of bitterness, of appreciation of what was good, and of letting go and saying good-bye from the deepest recesses of my heart.
Blessed and bittersweet and in its own way, I now know profound gladness to have lived through the deepest rejection possible and come through strong and solid and tall of heart and spirit. I am simply stronger for it, and in a weird sort of way, thankful for it.
What does one do with a year like this?
What I do know, is once we've faced the very worst things, with our hearts cracked open wide, all we have left is courage and authenticity and a blank canvas of life to come, by which we are more equipped than ever before to dance and to celebrate and to sorrow and grieve.
There is not one without the other in this life.
Today, as I write this blog I find out that the new grand-baby my daughter is carrying is a boy.
Dorian is his name.
We welcome you little Dorian. We are eagerly and with much delight awaiting your arrival.
2012, we welcome you as well, with all the good and the bad that this next year might bring, we will simply come out the other side stronger of mind and body, heart and soul.
Quite simply, God, we thank-you for life, the good the bad and the ugly, and your presence in it; and we invite you into our 2012's.
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