Another New Year's Eve

As I seem to keep finding myself saying....How did we get here!?! This has been such an incredible year. It seems like it was just yesterday that it was the beginning of 2008...and yet when I think back to that beginning, it feels like a very, very, long time ago. When I think about all that has transpired, about the things I did not know even know about my life then that have completely transformed it now.....well, it's kind of mind-boggling, to say the least.

I did a post last New Years Eve on intentions, my version of New Year's resolutions. The intentions I chose for 2008 were the following:

• To choose "compassionately curious" over judgement whenever possible regarding the behavior of myself and others.
  
• To continue to take the risk of authenticity in all areas of my life.
  
• To do a better job taking care of my physical being...including letting other people nurture me even when that level of vulnerability gets a little scary.
  
• To be consistent in my spiritual disciplines....yoga, solitude, journaling, prayer... those things that sustain me if I sustain them.
  
• To be a better steward of all my blessings, including (or maybe especially) the material ones.

As I look at these it strikes me how many of them have turned out to really be manifested in some pretty big and important ways in my life this year, considering that I really didn't commit the list to memory or hang it on my bulletin board, or do any of the things that one is encouraged to do with the things one is truly intentional about. I can only assume that these were things that I really truly did want, and that God in God's dream for me also saw as good, and thereby the opportunities were provided for me to work on them.

I've been reading back through some old journal entries and blog posts for the year as I often do as a kind of life inventory at year's end. It's always interesting to look back and see the things that I boldly stated and then totally and completely ignored, thereby indicating that I clearly did not or could not know them at the time that I wrote them.

Of course the big events of my life this year have been on the relationship front. The closure of one chapter of my life as XDO and I parted, and moving into what I assumed was going to be a long time of being single and exploring that in a new way for myself. And instead of course I am exploring something else entirely! Going on the BE cruise was such a pivot point for me as things began to disintegrate in my relationship life last Winter. I honestly don't know if I had not had that liminal space with the safety and love of all y'all, to whom I could say what felt at that time to be some pretty unspeakable truths, if I could have claimed myself, if I could have released the tethers with which I had bound myself for so many years, if I ever could have let myself really be free. There just isn't ever going to be enough gratitude....ever.

The other "Big Event" has of course been the so-far unbloggable situation that I have referred to as the "falling shoes." I got in trouble for something that I did that I believe was right and good and some other people did not. I am hoping to be out soon. I am hopeful about that. It too, was an interesting time in that I learned that faith holds, God really is there in the dark and that the prayers of others are a real and tangible force that will hold and carry me if I let them.

I learned a lot about being cared for this year. In taking that risk of allowing nurturing I have found it to be not only just a good thing, but a truly transformational one. It has opened my heart and softened me in some pretty important ways, I think. For perhaps the first time in my life I am not afraid to say, "Help me, please....I need...." And to know I can, and that someone does...well, it connects me with God yet again and reminds me that I am blessed and beloved.

So yes it has been quite the year. Flying by at the speed of grace bringing blessings and changes and transformations all over the place. Oh, and love. We must not forget love. Not just the one that looms so large on my horizon right now....the one that lights up my heart (when it's not giving me panic attacks), but all the love in my life. My friends near and far. Those whose faces I have seen and those who I have not. The people whose love does carry me and bring me God every single day. I literally feel as if I live surrounded in a cocoon of blessedness simply because of those friendships. As this is not something that has always been, I do not take it for granted and I treasure it deeply.

I'm still thinking about my intentions for next year. For now, I simply wish to all a blessed and peaceful 2009.