The Difficult, Wonderful Year

This has been a difficult year. Little deaths, shattered illusions, foibles played out in center stage. The known has become unknown, answers have dissolved into questions, colors have bled together and layered themselves into shades I don't recognize. There is the undercurrent of change in this difficult year, a sense of being prepared for something I can't quite put my finger on. But that something is looming with sweet-scented breath just outside my window. The window that has yet to open.

I know I will look back on this year with gratitude and see that it was filled with opportunities for grace, and that despite the angst and the emotional tumult, I took those opportunities and turned them into future splendor.

As this difficult, wonderful, purposeful year winds itself down into memory and dust, I am left with two phrases playing over and over in my wakeful mind: "Do not give up 20 feet from the finish line" and " If you focus your energy and attention on something beneficial long enough, it will bear fruit. Fruit that sweetens breath."

I will carry those phrases with me, pasted to a locket and held over my heart, as the last few weeks of the difficult year melt into new beginnings, and the latch on the window is finally released.