2012 (introspective) recap

It makes me smile to look back at my New Year 2012 posts.  Overall, it was a great year - better yet, I didn't need my goals and dreams to make it so.

I felt I went into 2012 with reasonable expectations.  What I hadn't factored in was the possibility that the first six months would be some of the happiest of my life.  I had a comfortable, quiet, hobbit-like schedule, and I regained some self-confidence and optimism that had been missing for a long time.  For the first time in eons, the season of summer meant something to me, and I actually spent hours reading outside (helped, indeed, by having grown out of allergies!).  Things seemed more or less perfect, which, not surprisingly, made subsequent attempts to be "content with change" a bit hard, though not nearly so hard as it could have been.  

Somewhat early in fall quarter, depression did find me again, at an unexpected time and for unexpected reasons.  There was a Sunday school song that I learned as a kid - for some reason it came to mind rather recently - and part of it goes "Only a boy named David / But he could pray and sing."  It strikes me now as an incredibly brilliant, simple statement of fact: even if you are utterly powerless, you still have the ability to pray and sing, to God's glory.  And that ability is a blessing in itself.

Everything is fine now - this year has left me with some permanent change for the best.  Though a bit hesitantly, I'm looking forward to 2013, and Bilbo's optimism struck a chord in me: "I do believe the worst is behind us!"  In a sense, he is wrong, because bad things keep happening.  But he is right, in that he can deal with it better now than he could have, prior to his many adventures.