Year In Review

I’ve always like December. I remember back to age 5 or 6 and watching Entertainment Tonight, or so some show like it, and being excited about the year-in-review type story they did. I found it fun to look back over the year and see if I remembered certain things, and that continued especially during the years that I was really into MTV and they would do the year’s top 100 video countdowns and such. Outside of a top-movies-of-the-year list I don’t necessarily look forward to December for entertainment remembrance, but I do like to take the time to look back over my life for the past twelve months this time of year.
2006 has been the toughest year of my adult life. While I certainly had an inkling that this year would be hard before it started, there was definitely a part of me that secretly thought that everything was going to be very easy and my new life changes and choices would be a huge success. But that’s not to say that any of this took me by surprise either. When I stepped out in faith, believing that God was calling me out of youth ministry mid-2006, I was ready to accept that things might not work out in a “happily ever after” fashion. That being said, I guess it wouldn’t necessarily be any easier to breath if I were told in advance that I was going to have the wind knocked out of me.
Even at this point my life is still very much up in the air, but I have a peace about the direction that I am now heading. With some direction, the assurance that I should be in pastoral ministry, I feel good about 2007 and what it will hold for my wife and I. I’m excited about being appointed somewhere and settling in for a good long tenure as a young pastor somewhere. I’m finally at that point in life where I feel like I have enough experience behind me to speak into other adult’s lives, but with so much still to learn and experience. It will be cool to learn in grow in the context of a community where my role is pastor.