An Old Year

In the first hour of the first day of the New Year in my time zone, I sat up with borrowed paper and pen, trying to find the words. Even with the writing I’ve been doing on this blog, I still felt the need to mark the turning of the year with ink and paper, with pondering and words as well as the fun and family gathering and food. I have so few records of my New Years and time keeps rolling on.

Sticky snow, 12/10/13

I used some of what I wrote that night in the last two paragraphs of this post on January 1st and I decided to distill a little more of it here. Part of what I struggled with in the silence in the opening hours of the new year was attempting to sum up the old year. It’s impossible for someone as wordy as myself to sum up a year in a few sentences (or even a few pages, sometimes.) But I feel like so little has been said in either my personal writing or my blogging about 2013 – there were so many things in the early days during the summer, when I was still finding my rhythm, that I wanted to blog about and never got organized enough to do. I know I’ll never fit them all here (nor did I fit them all in the pages I wrote that night), but I can at least touch on some highlights.

It’s been a full year now in my current job – I officially transferred into this position on January 7, 2013. In so many ways, it’s the best job I’ve ever had. We’ve got an awesome team in this department and have had a lot of successes over the past year. And after nearly five years, all told, working in the restaurant industry, I love working for a Christian organization for so many reasons. Even just a consistent 40 hours a week, Monday to Friday, schedule has been a positive change from the constantly fluctuating, usually weekends, sometimes six days a week schedule of my previous job. The better pay has also resulted in a better standard of living this year.

It’s been a full year for my family as well, in a different sense of the word. Some of it has been hinted at in my thankful lists, but most of the details I’ll leave up to the people

My nephew enjoying the view, 9/2/13

involved to share with cyber-space if they would like. I will say the year has ranged from a brother getting married in March (which was its own bundle of wonderful craziness – though I wholly approve of the new sister-in-law, for the record) to my parents’ international travels and Mom’s health scare (and the awe of watching God provide for them through it while on the other side of the world) to the adventure of my niece’s fifth birthday party in August, all capped off with almost all of us together for the holidays and the announcement on Christmas Eve that my third brother and his wife are expecting child #2 sometime late June.

There have been so many other things this year – so many movies (including both The Desolation of Smaug and Frozen over the holidays with family), so many good books, so many moments… from cheering while watching church league softball in the summer sun to laughing a few days ago at the video of a friend’s two month old son accidentally getting his face in the snow; from crying at Les Misérables to grinning at my first ever sempervivum and begonia blossoms; from curling up alone in the dark, trying to keep the loneliness from cracking my heart, to sitting on the couch on New Year’s Eve with my dad to my right, my five-year-old niece on my lap and my almost-four-year-old nephew wedged between his dad and me on my left, while the two munchkins passed a phone game back and forth and learned about the joys and trials of sharing and my heart filled back up again with warmth … 🙂

Sunset, 12/26/13

Like I said, I know a whole year won’t fit here, there remains so much that wasn’t mentioned, and I still haven’t found a way to wrap it all up with a neat bow (the little editor in my head says “Can you ever?” 🙂 ) But 2013 was quite a year, in so many ways. I am looking forward to some things in 2014, especially to being an aunt again, and wondering what other things the year may hold, given all that got crammed into the last one. In some ways, the possibilities are pretty wide open.