Don't return to vomit

I had a weak moment last week and made contact with Runaway Train. I realize this is the third dumbest thing I could have ever done. I say third because after wailing to one of my friends that it was the dumbest thing I could've ever done, he was quick to point out that, in fact, marrying Runaway Train would actually be the dumbest thing to do, and the second dumbest thing would be to tattoo his name somewhere on my body. Third dumbest thing was to talk to him again. I was grateful for this clarity.

I think it started in Haiti. For some reason, within about two hours of being in that country, lots of things became remarkably clear to me. My friend John, who has lived in Haiti for a very long time, made the comment that Haiti has a way of quickly surfacing things in one's life that need to be dealt with.

So I realized two things right away driving around Haiti that first afternoon: first, that I truly needed to forgive Runaway Train. If Jesus is willing to forgive me of anything and everything I've ever done, the least I can do is forgive someone else who harms me in some way. Second, I realized that I wasn't entirely innocent in the whole fiasco and owed him an apology for some things.

So I emailed him to do just that. I expected to either never hear back from him or to be told yet again to never speak to him again, but he surprised and sent a kind email back.

I probably should have left it at that, but I'm a girl, and sometimes a messed-up, dumb girl at that, and we ended up having a real conversation when I was back from Haiti. It was very generic and casual, but afterwards I was left with a bad taste in my mouth, mostly because he lied to me about something right off the bat, and I felt like I was staring down a very dark chasm that I was all too familiar with and I had the choice to either jump in again or walk away.

I've read this verse a lot, and I even saw Runaway Train in it when he himself chose to drop me and go back to a less than stellar relationship, which is what derailed things in the first place. But it felt real to me for my life this week and it made sense:

"As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly." (Proverbs 26:11)

Yikes.

The other thing that happened to me in Haiti is that I picked up a case of Haitian Happiness for about 24 hours. I threw up five times in three hours one afternoon. Nobody else got sick, just me. And I can tell you, there is nothing appealing about vomit, unless you're a dog and then it's just an afternoon snack.

I think it's best now to let things lie with Runaway Train. My conscience is clear now as far as he goes and if our paths ever cross again either personally or professionally, we'll be polite and civil to each other. But beyond that chance meeting that may never happen, it's best to not return to him in any capacity. Returning to vomit is just a bad idea. Period.

I'm grateful to know that now and hope that this is the last time I feel any need to write anything about it again.

If you haven't watched the most recent episode of Community, you should. It bears an uncanny resemblance to me, Runaway Train, and my loyal friends who have patiently worked at holding me back this week. It reminds me of another verse too:

Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their work;
If one falls down,
his friend can help him up.
But pity the man who falls
and has no one to help him up!
Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.
But how can one keep warm alone?
Though one may be overpowered,
two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12)

So the moral of the story is don't be a fool and go back to your vomit. And find some friends who will hold you back when you think vomit is what you want.

Grateful

It's been five weeks since my runaway train told me to never speak to him again (read about that here.) Maybe I'm counting on purpose, or may it's just that it happened on a Monday, so I remember every Monday. But, really, whenever someone goes through a loss, whether it's losing someone to death or just dumb immaturity, they count things. First it's days. Then it's weeks. Then it's months. Then years.

No matter how long ago the loss was, we can give you numbers. We never fully forget and we never really stop counting.

But eventually there comes a day when the incessant urge to count and recount and relive and replay slow down enough to remind you of what life was like before the loss. I don't know that you ever feel normal after losing something or someone, but grace is being able to feel sort of like yourself again. A slightly modified version, but with enough familiarity that you can manage it.

I'm happy to report that today I'm grateful. I stood in my kitchen on Thursday morning before work crying and asking God if there would ever come a day when I just felt like Robin again and He heard me and gave me today.

A few things helped. First, I have a friend who is living through something similar and struggling too. We texted a lot this weekend and that helped. It's good to not feel alone. Misery loves company. And remarkably, company makes you stop thinking only about yourself and think about someone else too.

Second, my cat Midge turns 5 this week. Most of the time I try to avoid anything that makes me out to be a cat lady, but Midge turning 5 is enough to propel me head on, wholeheartedly, and without abandon into cat lady-hood.

See, I got Midge when she was 10 weeks old. She was a rescue kitten and the runt of her litter. Her back legs are slightly deformed and she had a bad respiratory infection. Her sibling kitties weren't letting her nurse so she was the tiniest, sickest, saddest little cat you've ever seen. Her owner was hoarding something like 25 cats when she got busted. Midge was taken to a vet specialty clinic to try and save her pathetic little life.

She looked like this:

The vets didn't think she had much of a shot, but they didn't want her to die in a kennel. So my roommate at the time brought her home to die in my house. But the thing is, you don't come to my house to die. You come to my house when you want to live.

Midge beat the odds. She's the weirdest cat you'll ever meet, but she's so scared of most people that you'll probably never meet her because she'll be hiding the whole time you're at my house. She hops around like a rabbit and because of her respiratory problems early in life, she sounds like she's dying when really she's just purring. I'm grateful that she lived and that I get to be her owner.

Here's how she looks today:

Finally, I'm grateful because I'm going to Haiti on Friday. This may be the strangest thing of everything I've mentioned to be grateful for, but I am. I've wanted to go to Haiti for a long time. I've prayed for Haiti, I've sent money to Haiti, I've sent other people to Haiti, but I've never gone myself and now I get to.

I'm scared about going to Haiti too, so it would be great if you prayed for me. I'm scared of how much my heart could possibly break from being there and I'm scared of what that could mean for the rest of my life. I'm scared of trying to get through the airport by myself, I'm scared of what Haiti is going to smell like, and I'm always scared when I have the great responsibility of caring for a team of people while in another country.

But fear and anxiety have a way of reminding me how big God is and that's something to be grateful for too.

How to run better

This week marks the five month anniversary of my ankle injury. You know - the one where I spent a week in Peru repairing a house back in October and instead of getting hurt there, waited until I was getting off the shuttle back at the Denver Airport to fall and badly sprain it.

I'd never really been injured before that. I've never had stitches, never broken a bone, never spent any time in a hospital for anything. I've lived a charmed life. But I learned a thing or two from being injured for a few months - first, that injuries take forever to heal and second, the best time to break through your comfort zone is right after you've recovered from an injury.

Two things to know - I hate being still and I'm not very patient. It's probably undiagnosed adult ADD. I have the attention span of a kitten most of the time, and am about as still as one too.

Speaking of kittens, this is funny. Watch it.

See what I mean? ADD.

Anyway, I was supposed to wear a brace for 6-8 weeks after I sprained my ankle. I wore mine for 3 weeks and 4 days. Close enough. For someone who can't sit or stand still for more than 10 minutes at a time, there was nothing more frustrating than not being able to move without pain week after week after week.

I'm not particularly athletic, meaning you would never be able to tell by looking at me that I love working out but I do. I love to run, swim, bike (sometimes I put them all together and even do a triathlon), walk, hike, and eat ice cream. The ice cream is what motivates me to do the other things. So having a sprained ankle for months meant no running, no swimming, no hiking, no walking, etc. That left me with biking (my least favorite of my favorite physical activities) and eating ice cream.

I wanted to be healed way faster than my body was willing to be. I remember getting on an elliptical six weeks after the injury and lasting for 30 seconds before having to switch to a stationary bike. Lame. Literally. Then another four weeks after that trying to lightly jog and gasping in pain after a minute and then being barely able to even walk 20 minutes on a treadmill. I really thought I was never going to be ok again.

But four weeks ago, four months after the injury, I tried again. And this time, my foot felt stronger and ready. The rest of my body had some catching up to do - it turns out, eating ice cream is not the same as running when it comes to building physical endurance. My body had no idea that it ever knew how to run and was shocked when I tried to make it do so again.

The beautiful thing, though, about starting over is that it gives you a chance to really start over. I had been in the same place with my running for years. The same pace, the same distance, the same amount of time I could go before I thought I was going to die. But now in starting over, after just four weeks of getting back into it, I'm forcing myself to go faster and farther than I did before. And you know what? I'm surprising mysef in the process. Because my body forgot that it ever knew how to run in the first place, I can now teach it to run better. Whatever psychological barriers I had leading up to my injury aren't factoring in now that I'm working from a clean slate.

So I can look back on last fall, being sidelined and forced to be still for a season, and be grateful for it now because, in the end, it's making me better at what I love to do.

It's also been four weeks now since my heart was broken. Again, I'm discovering that this takes longer to heal than I want it to. I've tried taking some tentative steps forward a couple of times over the last few weeks only to discover that it's way too painful still, and probably will be for awhile. That's ok. I've learned from my ankle that injuries aren't the end of the world and healing does come with time. And I'm hopeful that in a few months, I'll be able to really start over for real with my heart too, and push it out of its normal comfort zone and teach it how to be better. It will be shocked when I try to make it feel something again, I'm sure, but by then, it will be more of the heart I want it to be.

In the meantime, there's always ice cream. And maybe I should get a kitten.

I love Lent

Today is the first Sunday in Lent. This may mean nothing to you or it may conjur up images of works-based religion that seems to spit in the face of the grace offered by Jesus.

For me, though, this is a special season in the church year. First, it marks one year that I've been regularly attending my little Anglican Church that I have come to love and appreciate so much. I first visited last year in March in the middle of Lent and stayed. I fell in love with the Anglican tradition enough to move towards it on a more permanent basis because of Lent.

Second, I appreciate both the somberness of reflecting on my life and moving towards greater self-control and discipline for a set period of time and also the concurrent anticipation of Easter and remembering why I call myself a Christian in the first place - because I believe in a God who cared enough to become like me, die, and then come back to life with the promise that I too can be whole, clean, healed, and reconciled back to Him.

Really, a little more self-control and discipline in life, whether physically or spiritually, is never a bad thing, and I think I would benefit much from having a Lenten attitude throughout the whole year, not just Lent. But I'll start small.

At my church during Lent, the pastor offers a time of confession before the service. I've never gone to confession before and didn't really know what to think about it, but some things were weighing very heavily on my heart this morning and I decided to go.

It turns out, it's strange and a little uncomfortable to confess things out loud to another person, especially a person I don't know extremely well, and because I have easy tears, I was bawling from pretty much the moment he said "Good morning." But as we moved through the confession, words from James came to mind, "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed."

Father Steve listened patiently through my tears and shaking words, and in all gentleness offered some scripture for me to meditate on this week and then reminded me that my sins are forgiven, that the price on my head has been paid for, and there is now no guilt or condemnation that need remain in my heart or mind. He prayed for me and as we closed our brief time together, I felt healing begin.

So I love Lent. I love that there are weeks set aside on purpose to reflect on where sin lingers too much still in my life and seek God's help and healing in those areas, while remembering that at the end of this season we will celebrate Easter, the day when death and sin lost the battle for my soul.

We sang a bunch of older hymns today too, which I always appreciate. One of them was "Commit Thou All That Grieves Thee." Each verse is a reminder to commit everything that is grieving your heart to God. My heart is grieving much right now, but I was encouraged by these words in the final verse, and I hope that you are too:

"Hope on, then, broken spirit;
Hope on, be not afraid.
Fear not the griefs that plague thee
And keep thy heart dismayed.
Thy God, in His great mercy,
Will save thee, hold thee fast
And in His own time grant thee
The sun of joy at last."

Runaway Train

I was dealt two endings last week within 24 hours of each other. One ending came exactly as I knew it would - gentle and kind, quietly, and with no surprises.

The other ending came as abruptly and unexpectedly as his original entrance into my life was. In the few short months I knew him, he plowed through my life like a runaway train, and like all runaway trains, no matter how exhilarating the ride may seem at first, there's rarely a happy ending. Runaway trains crash, people die or get really hurt, and the bystanding crowd gathers around to tell stories of other runaway trains because they're at a loss as to how to help the wounded survivors.

Bystanders always mean well, I think. I've been one many times and I don't think I've ever meant any malice or harm in my words to those victims of runaway trains lying comatose and bleeding on the ground. I think I just don't ever understand what I should be saying or doing in that situation, so I grasp at whatever nice platitude I can think of to throw their way and hope a kind word is enough to stop the bleeding.

I've never been in a real accident or been seriously hurt, but I watch enough Grey's Anatomy to know that in emergency situations where someone is bleeding or dying, a kind word is never enough to save them. No, to save a life from the edge requires rolling up your sleeves, getting blood on your hands, and being willing to take dramatic risks to get that person breathing again.

I'll be honest - I'm bleeding right now, pretty profusely. I'm lying on the ER table knowing that there are people around who care and want to help and I can feel that there is work being done on me by the Great Physician, but there's a lot of shock and confusion about what happened, how I came to be in this situation in the first place and how long is it going to take to feel whole again. Not to mention realizing how much I left onboard the runaway train and feeling like the only way to be whole again is to get back on the same train. If given the chance, I would buy a ticket for another seat on this crashed train.

When I was 22, I was naively optimistic about the future. I took rides on all kinds of trains and went to all sorts of places. There were trains everywhere, and when one crashed or threw me off, I figured I was young enough and there was plenty of time to find another one to get on. I was a lot more dramatic after train crashes when I was younger - lots of wailing and sulking for months at a time sometimes - but there was always another train.

I'm almost 33 now and each crash feels more and more fatal, and there are fewer and fewer trains coming to the station even though I have a valid ticket in hand. One of the hardest parts about waiting at the station right now is how many people walk by and tell me stories about their friend or sister or cousin or whoever who finally found the right train when she 40, 50, 60 years old and to not give up! The Conductor has a good train in mind for you, Robin! Just keep waiting!

That's all fine and good and nice to hear when I was 22. But I really don't want to be told to suck it up and wait another 10, 15, 20 years for something that may never come.

The reality is I was fine. I was happy. I enjoyed my life and I was content. I didn't ask for this runaway train to run me over but it did, and now I just need some time to heal from the blow.

He told me I have easy tears and he was right. That was before he told me to never speak to him again. We were sitting on a park bench in his city one night a few weeks ago listening to a live band sing Spanish worship songs. It should have been a nice evening and he was upset that I was crying. But that's what you do when you realize the runaway train is still a runaway train no matter how much you want it to slow down and be the right train. That moment when you realize there's no way you're going to get off it in one piece.

I know I'll be ok. I don't need to hear that because I know. I also know time heals and God heals - He has healed me from deeper and worse pain than this. I know the verses about hope and good futures and those aren't particularly helpful to be reminded of right now either because I know them and I read them a lot.

I don't need to be told that you knew all along it was a runaway train and you didn't like that I got on it in the first place but you didn't want to hurt my feelings. That's not helpful. I'd rather know early on that I picked a bad train than be told after the carnage that you knew I'd get hurt. I may not listen to you but I'd rather hear it early instead of later.

I don't want to hear negative comments about this runaway train. Yes, he did damage, and yes I'm in pain, but I don't want to harbor bitterness or anger towards him. I want to forgive him and I want good things for his life. I miss him. For all the grief he caused at the end, he still brought sweetness to my life for a season and mostly I want to remember that.

The other thing about Grey's Anatomy is that it's set in a teaching hospital. There's rarely an episode that goes by where some portion of the staff doesn't gather to watch a surgery from a little room above the operating room. It's almost always a groundbreaking or risky surgery, and the characters somehow manage to resolve all of their life problems while watching the surgery and talking about life, love, and what to have for lunch.

Maybe that's a little what this blog is like for me. It's my teaching hospital where I let people watch the surgery to help the train crash victim get back to normal life again. It's a way to share what I'm thinking and feeling without having to have dozens of the same conversations about it. It's easier to let the wound be seen once by many people than to have to rip the band-aid off over and over again.

I know that the Great Physician is doing His healing work. And I know the Conductor has a good plan for my life. I know those things so deep down that I can't divorce myself from them even if I try. But for right now, I'm bleeding, I'm trying to understand how to not talk to someone I talked to every day for a long time, and I'm trying to remember how to walk.

And I know that one ending (or two) paves the way for new beginnings. I think next time, though, I'll try a taxi instead of a train.

Why Good Girls Go Bad

I'll let all of you men out there in on a secret - there is not a woman alive who ever wants hear the following words come from your mouth: "You are so nice."

This should be pretty logical, actually. When was the last time you wanted to act like a hero for a woman who told you you were nice? I'm guessing never. There is no fairy tale out there where the prince slays the dragon and saves the princess and she says, "Thanks, prince. You're so nice for rescuing me. Now if you'll just put me back down, I have to return to my palace and wash my hair because your dashing rival, who isn't all that nice, is taking me out to dinner."

For some reason, women, or at least me, seem to think that if they are nice enough eventually the prince will want them. The thought process seems to be, "If I can just cook him one more dinner or listen to him cry about that stupid other girl one more time or if I just help him with his homework one more time, then he'll see that he can't live without me."

This is dumb thinking and I'm tired of it. I don't know why it's taken me 32 years to figure out that usually the words "You are so nice" are almost always immediately followed by "You're such a great friend."

Friend. The other word that all women (and most men) hate to hear. Always the friend, never the girlfriend.

There's a couple of reasons why this is swirling around in my brain today. For one, I was thinking about a woman I used to know who I'll call Naomi. She died a couple of years ago but I knew her for a number of years through mutual friends. She was married for a little while years and years ago but her husband cheated on her with another man and she divorced him and never remarried. When I met her she was in her 70's and had lived alone for most of her life. No husband, no children, just a quiet solitary life. She would join us for Christmas or Easter or any other holiday where you typically get together with family, and I always used to think that even though she was a great lady, I didn't want to be like her as I got older. It got to where I almost dreaded seeing her on holidays because I was terrified of becoming her.

I don't want to be the spinster lady who goes to a friend's house on holidays because she has no one else and nowhere else to go. I keep the number of cats that live in my house strictly at two now for this reason too. If I can keep the cats at bay, maybe I can keep spinsterhood at bay too. Illogically logical.

I don't much about Naomi's story. Maybe she was happy and she liked her quiet life. Or maybe she lived the rest of her life being nice and the good friend and she secretly hated it but didn't know how to change. I'll never know. But from my perspective, I just saw loneliness and that I didn't want to have that end up being the story of my life.

I know I'm far from being a 70-something year old spinster cat lady at this point in my life, but having just been told yet again, "You're so nice and I just want to be your friend," for the upteempth time, Naomi has been on my mind today. Part of me feels like I need to change how I'm living my life in order to avoid becoming Naomi. If I keep hearing the words, "You're so nice. Let's be friends," maybe I need to figure out how not to be quite so nice and friendly.

I think this is ultimately what makes good girls go bad - they get tired of hearing the words, "You're so nice." They don't go bad because they've stopped trusting in God and His timing. I still trust in those things with all of my heart. Good girls go bad because they're tired of being nice.

So this is me today.

I don't want to be nice anymore. I'll be kind, I'll be compassionate, I'll be generous, I'll be wise, I'll be a servant, I'll be a smartass, I'll be surprising, but I'm not going to be nice. I don't think Jesus was nice. He was a lot of things, but at the end of the day there isn't a verse in the Bible that says, "Jesus was so nice." I want to be like Jesus, not the nice spinster woman I'm terrified of becoming.

To all of my single male friends, I'm done being nice to you. I'm not going to cook you another dinner. Learn how to cook for yourself or marry someone who will cook for you. I'm not going to listen to your problems any more. Talk to someone else about them or marry a woman who will listen to you for the rest of your life. I'm not going to help you with your work or your project or your homework or whatever else you can't seem to do yourself without my help. Ask one of your guy friends to do it, or marry a woman who will be your helpmate for the rest of your life.

And guys, stop being nice to us. We don't want nice men anymore than you want a nice woman. Be men. Be kind. Offer your strength when we need it. Be courageous. Be bold. Take risks. Serve the women in your life as you would serve Christ. But don't be nice. We don't need you to be nice. We need you to be men. And you don't need us to be nice. You need us to be women. And as much as it's in my control to do so, I'm done being nice.

I still trust God with all my heart that someday there will be a man who wakes up and realizes that his life will be better lived with a strong, capable, kind, and competent woman by his side, and that woman is me. I have no idea where he is or what's taking him so long, but one thing I know - when he meets me, the last thing that will cross his mind is, "Wow, that's one nice lady."

Another New Year's post - as if you haven't seen enough by now

Do you ever wish you could just go back in time and change something? It's a rhetorical question, I know. We all wish this, probably multiple times a day. At least I do.

Here's part of my list:

• I wish I had walked away sooner. I was too loyal when I was 16 and it's a trait that has haunted me ever since. Being unabashedly stupidly loyal is about as natural to me as breathing now.
  
• I wish I had gone to the other college. I was afraid of what would happen if I did, so I didn't.
  
• I wish I hadn't done what I did to my sister that one afternoon. She forgave me, but I hurt her. Really, really hurt her.
  
• I wish I had listened more and talked less. Maybe I wouldn't have hurt my friend as much as I did all of those years ago.
  
• I wish I had never met him. Life would have been much, much easier if I hadn't.
  
• I wish I hadn't taken things so seriously. I wish I hadn't been so scared I was going to do the wrong thing for as long as I did.
  
• I wish I could re-live high school knowing what I do now at age 32. But who wants to go back to high school?
  
• I wish I had kissed him. But things would be much more complicated now if I had.
  
• I wish I had bought a different house. A house with a yard already going.
  
• I wish I had gone to see him before he died. But I didn't.
  
• I wish I hadn't bought that plane ticket. I wish I hadn't canceled the one I did four years ago. I wish I had bought the one I never did.
  
• I wish I hadn't said everything that's ever hurt anyone I cared about. I also wish I had spoken up and said the right thing when instead I stayed quiet and let the moment pass.

But enough of this nonsense. For all of the things that I've listed above, good has come out of them, or will come out of them yet. And each thing on that list has brought me to the life I am currently living and the woman I am, and these are not things to regret.

I believe in a God who works everything out for good. He does good things in my life becase He loves me and has a purpose for my life.

Here is the good He has brought out of the things on the above list that from my perspective have been total and complete failures:

• Loyalty is rare. Even though I may express it sometimes at the wrong times and towards the wrong people and circumstances, it's a good thing to have, and it has served me well in my jobs, in my friendships, in my faith. I don't regret this. I'd rather be loyal than a flight risk any day.
  
• Because I stayed put when I went to college and didn't go out of state, I was able to be part of my boys' life until they moved back to Canada. I poured into the lives of many high school students through Young Life and saw God do great things in them. I don't regret any of this.
  
• My sister has taught me more about grace than probably anyone else and she doesn't even know it. I have done more harm to her in the name of Jesus than I have probably done to anyone else. And yet she loves me. Through her, I have seen God and His unconditional love for me. I regret hurting her as often as I have, but I don't regret how God has used my mistakes to teach me more about who He is.
  
• For all the friends I have hurt with words, see above. Same lesson learned. Regret the pain I caused, don't regret the grace that has come with it.
  
• I took things so seriously for so long and then someone I loved died, and ironically, that was the thing it took for God to rebuild me into someone who holds on to life much more lightly. Sometimes you have to lose everything in order to gain what is really life. I laugh more now. I take risks. I love people with abandon. I have tested the edge of God's grace and found that it has no bounds. As a result, I am free to live life joyfully, with my heart on my sleeve, loving every moment, even the hard and awful ones.
  
• Sometimes the people you wish you had never met end up being the greatest blessings you could ever imagine. I'm not quite there yet with this one but trusting God will make things clear and right and good in some way.
  
• This summer will be 15 years since I graduated high school. You couldn't pay me enough to re-live those days. But I am trying to grow up with each day that goes by. I have a long ways to go, but I think I'm on the right track.
  
• Kissing complicates things. I regret not taking the chance, but in retrospect, we messed things up enough in our friendship without throwing that in on top of it all. I'm still hoping for another chance when it's the right time...
  
• I love my house. Really I do. But I hate my backyard. Hate it. And I don't have enough money to make it look nice. And yet, awful backyard aside, being a homeowner has taught me about budgeting, caretaking, making wise choices, using my home for God's glory, and being generous with my space and time. I may regret the house I chose, but I don't regret how God has used the house He gave me.
  
• I thought about visiting. I thought about it a lot. But I was so scared and I didn't want to take the risk. So he died without ever seeing me one last time. I regret this, but I don't regret how God used that to make me a person who takes risks now when her heart tells her to. I would rather take risks with my heart than live a lonely, sad life. Also, I was able to visit a different friend several times this fall before he died because I learned that life is short and even though hospitals are scary and you may not know what to say, it's better to go than not go at all.
  
• Traveling risks. I'm trying to sort through one right now that isn't going to have a pretty solution no matter what I do, but canceling other plans in years past ended up being just as ugly because I didn't go. I think I would refer to the above point again...I would rather be one who takes crazy risks than one who doesn't. Life is much more interesting this way, albeit messy. Very, very, very messy.
  
• I bet for most of us, our biggest regrets are from words. But the reality is, we cannot live life without hurting others and ourselves with the words we say. This is why God tells us to be very wise with the words we use. I know that I've come a long ways with this one. I've said some extremely hurtful and mean things through the years, and I've said things carelessly or in a teasing way that have hurt those I loved as much as if I had said something hurtful on purpose. Yet, through the years, God has faithfully and patiently shown me that He does not use hurtful words to me and little by little, He is making me into a woman who seeks to affirm and build others up instead of tearing down. I know this will be a constant work for Him until the day I die, but I see growth and that encourages me. And I've learned a lot about seeking forgiveness and giving it to others when their words have hurt me.

A new year always brings a lot of reflection and anticipation. We can't help but think of the things we regret but also hope that things will be better and different this year. I have no idea what this year holds, but I do know the One who holds this year. And I trust Him with every regret and mistake I am going to make in 2012, and know that in 2013 I will look back and see that He turned things into good. I believe this with all of my heart, and I pray the same for you with whatever you are regretting or hoping for today.