Reflecting on the Ode to 2012 and the Entering into 2013

Over the course of my life I have come to realize that some years are harder than others. 2012 was a hard year for me and I am sure for those of you in difficult marriages 2012 was a hard year. Getting rid of a difficult situation by no means assures a smooth future and there are certain life situations where you are just "stuck" and others where you can choose to stay on the journey or leave it. The question is whether or not you have learned what God intended you to learn and if you were transformed on the journey in the way He was working toward. There will always be another difficult journey ahead to grow and strethc us. As I reflect on the end of 2012 and all its struggles and triumphs, I am reminded that tomorrow 2013 has hope and anticipation; a new year is one of those road signs reminding us that it can be better. 2012 started out with promise for me, as does the start of each year. It is with anticipation that I consider all the possibilities ahead. The year was full of surprises though; amidst the pressures of my school my dad suffered a heart attack in February and had heart surgery. In an already over-extended season of my life, God stretched me. For the first couple of weeks, I was able to lean into my husband for support. Human connection is often our first place of comfort. However, a couple of weeks into the process of my dad's recover my husband's father fell off a roof and ended up in a rehab facility across town. No longer was he the one I could turn too; rather my heavenly Father (where I should have run to in the first place) was my source of strength. He showed me that even when life appears to have nothing left He can supply more! While I was in it, I didn't feel it or see it; however as I look back it was clear that His grace was sufficient. There were more reminders of His sufficiency; I also took my qualifying exams for my Ph.D. this year. There is no way to describe this experience except to say you are reading and writing for 10 to 15 hours a day for 7 days and then take 7 days off and then start all over again for another 7 days. A couple of days before my exams were to begin, my parents called and said that my mom needed to go in to have a stint put in her heart. There was no time for me to get back home. So, on the first day of my exam in the first hour of taking it, my mom went in to surgery to have stint put in her heart (she has already had heart surgery twice and the possibility of her not surving was very real and present). I prayed. I put my mother in God's hands and let His will be done. And, then I put my exam in His hands and began writing. I knew to survive and pass the exams, I would have to live in two weeks of complete absorption and total focus. This came at a cost to my husband, who I completely ignored for those two weeks. We had "planned" ahead on how to manage those weeks, but until you are in the midst of it you don't know if you sufficently prepared for the journey. My Ph.D. experience over and over has felt like a season of "self-absorption". It has stretched me as I have wrestled with balancing the "we" and the "I" and the "call" I feel God placed on my life to go in this direction. The "call" God places on one's life can be an excuse to self-absorption. The "we" decided this is our path can become an excuse for self-absorption and obviously the I is ever present in self-absorption. There is a continually process in the journey of transformation that challenges us to reflect on our call, our we, and the I. My journey of the call, the we, and the I faced its biggest challenged to date. Just before thanksgiving my parents and I were stopped in gridlock traffic and were rear-ended by another vehicle at a high speed. No pun intended but life as I knew it came to a crashing halt! My days have been and are filled with facing one decision after another with the call, the we, and the I. There are no simple decisions. Each one has a ripple and impacts the future. In reality, this is true all the time. Our decisions do have an impact on the course of our journey's. It is in difficult trials that the possible effects are heightened and we wrestle with what is best to do and how to proceed. Here is where our faith must enter if we are to survive challenging seasons. If we bear the burden of our decisions they can crush us? If we don't consider the consequences of our decisions on others, it can crush them? Ironically (God's consistent sense of humor in my life), I was in a Philosophy of Religion class during all this. When the accident happen we were reading about God's foreknowledge. In the midst of the crisis, I was being presented with a different way of viewing God's foreknowledge. I clung to the way I knew! It was my security blanket!!! Thankfully my professor provided a living example of God's compassion and grace. Once I was out of the immediate crisis and began reflecting on the timing of the assignment and my personal circumstances, I began considering the "if". Without getting to heady into philosophy of religion, the new thought was that God is in active two way relationship with us and in doing this (choosing to be in a two way relationship) He has made himself vulnerable. As I end 2012 and enter 2013 I am pondering what this might mean. I have believed that God is in relationship with me, but I don't think I ever considered that He would be vulnerable. However, true intimacy does involve vulnerability by both participants. So maybe, just maybe, in the midst of 2012 as I faced the challenges they were preparing me to consider a new element in my relationship with God. I am still overwhelmed at the thought of the Almighty being vulnerable to me! Why? Because I still have times where the "I" wins rather than the "we's" in my life or the "call" in my life. And if God is vulnerable in my relationship with Him, my heart is deeply saddened by the "I" choices I make. However, I still rest in His promise that He is still able to take "all things" including my selfish "I" and turn them for good! Again, in the midst of those long days of writing and focusing I got a call from my parents that my and alot to !look forward too. I have been working on my Ph.D. (thus my lack of consistency in writing this blog). This years journey was especially difficult as there were many The third year of you