Ready or Not... Here Comes 2013!

I can't say that I feel particularly ready for 2013, but I do feel very ready for wrapping up some areas of my life and welcoming change in some others. This year, I'm looking forward to watching Brooke and Adam begin their first year of marriage together, building more memories with K, Mom, and Dad (dare I say I Spy was a highlight this year?), seeing S, C and G continue to grow more into their personalities, welcoming C's baby sister as well as many friends' first and second children into the world, and maintaining hope. I was struck this break, after seeing old friends and new friends and spending time with those people who are a part of who I am, that I have had a very full life--filled with very full seasons. There is so much laughter intermingled with the tears, a laughter that only resounds in fullness, and so despite all, I know I have been blessed beyond measure.

Although I kept my resolution from 2012 to drink more water (training for even just a sprint tri left me feeling parched even after liters and liters of water) and climb more outside (which I did with the help of the "tribe elder"), I think I somehow missed the more important resolution to be more demonstrative in how much I love and appreciate people. In fact, the year seems to be a quite self-centered one, perhaps encouraged by the self-focused bent of exercise and training. Or perhaps encouraged just because I am selfish.

So, for 2013, I hope to become more self-less, more others-focused, and yes, to try again to become more appreciative. I have yet to sit and wait for a verse for the year, but repeatedly the last few months I have returned to Ephesians 3. There is most certainly hope to be found there!

Good night sweet 2012, perhaps I will write more about you later! Until then, hello 2013!

Ephesians 3: 14-21, The Message -- My response is to get down on my knees before the Father, this magnificent Father who parcels out all heaven and earth. I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God.

God can do anything, you know—far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.

Glory to God in the church! Glory to God in the Messiah, in Jesus! Glory down all the generations! Glory through all millennia! Oh, yes!