A New Year...365 days of 24 hours each...to plan, live life fully, and face together whatever lies in the wings.
I have looked over the past year's activities and have come to the realization that life is full of gifts. Each new day is a gift. The sunshine, the rain, the wind, and the snow are all gifts. Flowers in spring, warm days in summer, the colors of fall and the bleakness of winter are gifts.
My friends are amazing gifts sent to bless my life. To borrow words from a well known poem, some come into my life and stay the whole life through, others only touch my life for a moment, but all are gifts and help shape my life. My amazing family is a super-sized gift that I shall treasure long past this life and into the eternities. Our lives have intertwined in such intricate and meaningful ways, that one day does not go by that I am blessed by them.
When I recount the recent celebration in December of the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ, I realize He is the greatest gift of all. For by Him and through Him and because of Him, all of these other gifts are made possible. I shall forever be thankful for His gift of eternal life given to me at such a great cost to Himself.
I go forward in this New Year, a year older (yes) and a little slower than I used to be, but each and every day brings to me a new discovery about my life, about the path I have chosen, about my friends, about my family, and about my Savior. And, in spite of a troubled world, stumbling in the mire of unbelief, I can smile and say, "This is going to be an amazing year!"
I have set goals to read more Scripture, work at treating this gift of my body a little better, and search out my ancestors lives more. So much of their work has already been done, but I have a yearning to find out WHO THEY REALLY WERE!
God bless everyone throughout this upcoming New Year of 2011.
