What will a new year bring? Unanticipated suffering or surprising ease. Health or physical descent. Or, rather than either extreme, will it bring something in between. And, with any of these paths, will the thing we don't expect accompany it? I hope for a deeper trust -- in God, in others, in myself. I know the probable path that hope will lead me and the thought of it makes me shrink back a bit into something more familiar...even as I don't want as much of what is familiar as I do of what isn't. Such odd juxtapositions within me...enough to make me feel strange at times, at others enough to make me feel like the living I'm doing is just beginning.
I don't want pain and I don't want to cause it, but both will happen. Can I believe that the joys that often accompany such things will outlast what will turn out more to be inconveniences than anything else? I hope I have faith enough to find out. Even as I hope, I know that I am being given it...despite the evidence that can worthily damn me. For that truth, for that good, for surpassing greatness I step forward...into a new year.
