I’ve been doing one of these for the past four years. I like to be able to look back on what I thought and felt. Memories fade too easily, and life goes by too quickly. Keeping a record is the only way I know how to slow that process down.
Twenty-twelve started out quite interestingly. Christmas break marked a bit of a backslide in my faith (as winter and summer breaks have been since I started college…don’t ask me why). I had been doing some stupid things, but that is simply how I operate, and I think God has grace for my rebellious little cycles.
I remember knowing that things were going to change on New Year’s Eve. I was sitting at my desk, getting ready for a friend’s party when my phone rang. I had desperately been praying and looking for a job, and I had had a couple interviews but with no luck. I put in an application at Walmart a month earlier and forgotten about it. Lo and behold, it was one of the co-managers of Marion Walmart asking if I could come in for an interview on Tuesday. I glady told him yes.
That night went on to become one of the best parties I have ever attended. It is a night that will never be forgotten by me, and a week that will live in infamy within my circle of friends. I was just talking to someone about it a couple nights ago. Needless to say, the year started out on a great foot.
Two weeks later, I was working at Walmart. A steady income was the answer to my prayers. However, I didn’t know that Walmart would also be the answer to something else I’d been praying about. Within a week of working there, a young man came up to me when I was leaving break. He introduced himself as Caleb, and said he’d seen me around campus. I remember wanting to ask him if he had fake contacts in, because his eyes were absolutely incredible. I forgot about it shortly after. A couple days later, he added me on Facebook. After a couple months of borderline stalking, getting my number and texting me incessantly, I agreed to go to dinner with him.
Surprisingly enough, he was completely enthralling. Charming, intelligent, and had a good handle on his Bible stories (=P). By June, we were officially dating, and I was falling. God had truly blessed me.
The summer was full of swimming pools, late night meals, deep talks on friend’s porches. I grilled out almost every week and made the best chicken I’ve ever tasted. I bought an acoustic guitar and jammed out in my apartment. I took the dreadful test called the GRE.
The fall semester was stressful, but rewarding. I did well in my classes, completed a senior thesis, and applied to grad schools. I talked about marriage….and then ran at break neck speed away from the topic, with both parties agreeing not to talk about it again until after I finished my master’s. But regardless, I was beginning to set up my future.
2012 has finally been a good year after three very, very rough ones. I can finally say that I’ve “gotten out of the desert and into the sun” (Gotta love The Format). So, that’s the song for this year. This year I experienced love again, happiness, wealth (as much as I personally ever have, at least), and the strange combination of excitement and crippling fear the adulthood brings.
May 2013 be filled with more love, joy, praises to God, friendship, trials and successes. Many things will change this coming year, but to those of you whom I love and have been with me through it all, I promise that you will be kept close. You are my family.
Happy New Year!
