All our Memories

“The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming. But again and again we avoid the long thoughts….We cling to the present out of wariness of the past. And why not, after all? We get confused. We need such escape as we can find. But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need—not all the time, surely, but from time to time—to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember—the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived.”
— Frederick Buechner (A Room Called Remember: Uncollected Pieces)

The "New Year" tends to push us all into that room thinking, reflecting, reeling outward and diving inward of where the paths we've taken have led and in all respects are leading.
Each and everyday I am presented with thousands of choices, I only acknowledge a few of them and depending on what they may be my days may be full and fulfilling or empty and lackluster. I strive to have days of meaning but I have been known to get caught up in the noise, the static the chaos and miss out on the beauty that could have otherwise enlivened this soul of mine. Instead of dwelling on what if's I hope to be able to enter that room of thought more often then not in the coming year. To see more of my plans, hopes and dreams materialize as I consciously and diligently seek to be more of the person I can be, the good honest hard working go getter that can at times be buried deep inside. I'm grateful for the year that is passed, for the lessons learned from the experiences lived, for smiles and laughter and tears of both joy and heartache for all such tears can bring us closer to our creator in understanding and love. I am ever grateful for Grace light and truth and that it can still be found if eyes, hearts and minds are left wide open to humbly receive them. Happy New Year, we love you all and thank our Father in Heaven for blessing us so often in spite of ourselves.