Beginnings

It's always fitting when mountaintop experiences happen on top of mountains.

I stood this morning in slippered feet and sipped peppermint tea while my mom and Aunt Darlene chatted in the next room.  Buttercup, a lion of a golden retriever, kissed my hand while I toyed with her silky ears, and the twilight-blue Steller's jay flew furiously at the enormous squirrel at the bird feeder (I've seen cats smaller than that animal).  The Poirson's house - mansion, really - towers over the rest of the world from its mountaintop perch, and from any window I could look out and see the city spread like a twinkling map below me, lights winking through the early-morning fog.

I needed some perspective, and here, standing over my life, I began to see a little more clearly.

I feel as though I am leaving behind many things that have clung to me throughout 2012, casting them off because they have become too heavy for me to carry (and, of course, were never mine to bear in the first place). Now I can look ahead with farsighted hope and anticipation of a new beginning instead of a continuation of the tiresome old.

This will be a year of remaking, rebuilding, restoring.  Given my tendency towards failure, I will fall many times and need to be picked up and brushed off and set back on the right track, but ultimately, I believe that the God who began a good work in me will carry it on to completion.  That's the thought that gives me joy and hope as I enter this new year.