rear view mirror

I had half of this written before I decided this thing needed to be short and sweet.

I was at lunch today with a friend talking about the post I was going to put up; I was overcome with the amount of things that can happen in a year. This year I had friends die, a nephew born, traveled to Africa, completed two more semesters of college, started a blog (clearly that's not very important, but I needed to throw that in), went 5 months without being able to hug my best friend, 2 break-ups, 3 set-ups, weird dates, even weirder parties, LOTS of friend got married/engaged... I mean I could continue, but I'll stop.  These things all played some kind of role in my growth as a person, but more importantly, most of these events helped me grow as a Christian.

My theme this year was forgiveness. I know we think about forgiveness when we wrong someone and we want to make sure they don't hate us, but what an honor it is to forgive others. I've been hurt this year, to the point of tears, and those people that hurt me, I went on a journey to forgiveness. My heart never really wanted to make peace of anything, I wanted revenge. But, by the grace of God, I remembered/keep being reminded of how much I've been forgiven by my Savior. It's been a trying year. I've made huge mistakes, and because I have my hope in Christ I've seen how emotional and spiritual scars can be made beautiful, no matter how painful and ugly they were originally.

So this post is short, but don't be fooled, my year was jam packed with a plethora of things that I'll remember for the rest of my life. As for those mistakes that left scars, if I hadn't made them, I might have forgotten the sweet joy of being forgiven by the Creator, my Savior, my King. It's been a beautiful year, every year in Christ is beautiful; it's one more year closer to being home.