It's a unique reflection. A whole year at a time. Not the way we usually look back.
Or forward, which I find particularly foreboding.
Reflecting on 2011, I imagine myself one year ago today. Had I known all that was to come, good and bad, I think like Scrooge when faced with Marley's declaration of the three spirits' imminent visits, I would have replied, "I think I'd rather not."
But thankfully, I didn't know. Like all my other years, I lived it one day at a time.
That's a good thing.
Our years are full of joys and sorrows, expected and the un. It would be a burden too great to bear to know ahead all that was to come.
So as I reflect, I enjoy the clarity of hindsight. How it reveals in truth what before was only known by faith.
And I remind myself I will sit here again one year from now making some sense of all that has passed in 2012.
I look back with gratitude and forward with hope.
And begin a New Year.
One thank-full and faith-full day at a time.
