Happy New Year!

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The little miss and I just had a great welcoming in of the new year up in Portland with LOTS of family… 

...and one of my wonderful sisters resurrected this wonderful list of “Things to do with free time” that I had written and sent to her when I was 17.  Here’s a sampling…  

1.  Learn Afrikaans
5.  Write a book
7.  Memorize a dictionary
9.  Cut the split ends off hair
11.  Collect quotes
12.  Memorize chapters in the Bible
14.  Create a record in Rook
15.  Make cookies
16.  Mend underwear
18.  Memorize medical symptoms
19.  Buy some monkeys
24.  Write an essay on the 1st sentence of every book
26.  Make counterfeit money
27.  Try to speak like an intellectual
28.  Practice different accents

…and I regret to inform you that, decades later, I still haven’t done a whole lot on my list.  I don’t think that free time ever materialized? 

In fact, I’ve rethunk the whole resolution business, and I like the whole “pick a word for the year” thing.  Just a focus, an emphasis, something to strive towards, rather than specifics I will never accomplish.

So, I hereby declare 2012 to be the “Year of Strength.”  As in:

And He said unto me, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for My strength is made perfect in weakness…” Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.  ~2 Corinthians 12:9-10

I am rather good at the weakness thing.  I make cookies far too little, I’ve never mended my underwear, and my hair has lots of split ends.  I am accomplished at failing in my resolutions, my ambitions, my goals, my day-to-day plans.  Infirmities plague me each step of the way.

“THEN am I strong!”

Happy New Year!