Seeing backwardsforwards

I have asked around. "Do you mark this changing of the years with any habit of reflection/goalsetting?"

Some do and do this well with great depth & reflection.

Some do and do this well with simple, SMART goals set out. 

Some do not and do this well with being real & present no matter what is to come, no matter what has been.

I am working it out. Every year is different, as it should be. And I find myself reflecting on what was come through  over one fleeting year, marveling as always that so much can be accounted for in such a brief time.  A year is a breath. I read back on journals & hunt down the scattered scribblings that help my memory store up the mile-markers driven into ground of life along this year's way. And I hesitate, knowing that all too quickly Jesus moves us on & has for us more.  I want to squeeze out all the drops from what has been. I do not yet know fully that which will be light to me in the days to come. I will not choose to fly by insight & wisdom & pain in a blur. For me,  I believe that there is a full and hearty grasping ahold when I make time to hear again, read again, speak again - putting the pieces of God's very self revealed in a multitude of facets into a prism of clarity. Only when. 

Good ideas are given by friends, letters are written, conversation had - accountability put into action - help in the process of the shifting through living without losing some of that weighty value. I stretch my bent head up from its scratching pen & realize this could take all year. I never have been one much for puzzles. Perhaps the best method for going at this is not an item on my list of doings, but a constant understanding that moments are to be remembered, inspiration penned or doodled, dreams followed through on

because God is who He says He is.

That doesn't mean I won't write it down, scheme it up, ask a million questions and try. I still will. But with a lens across my ears & eyes that lets in lots of Truth. Lots of it. 

A distant friend of a friend sums up well what I find gives confidence from the exact Right & True source.

"

So, yes, sand between my fingers. Vapors. But somehow, in His economy, beads strung on the thread of time, all adding up to more than we can measure. I look at this past year with this confidence, and it shapes my perspective on the year to come.

"

I go head on into it: 2012  

With my journal & Bible under one arm, eager to measure with a Measurement not my own.