Happy New Year... or something...

Hello friends,

I love New Year's. Not because of the champagne and parties; not because the hustle and bustle of the holiday season is finally over; and especially not because of the sudden college football television monopoly. I love New Year's because it signifies the end of something newly completed and the beginning of something completely new. Suprisingly, both the ending and beginning excite me. At times, I think that celebrating "New Year's" seems a bit foolish. When you really think about it, it's only a matter of seconds that separate the old from the new... but I think we all need that definitive separation to give us the ability to get past what is past.

Recently, everyone left 2005 and entered 2006 at different points in their lives... the common denominator of the situation is that we are all entering a new year very differently than we entered the least one. Some of us got married, some of us had children... some of us won the lottery and blew it all on Coach purses and Maybelline. (No, I don't know anyone that did that, but it made me laugh to think about... seriously, think about it. You'll laugh too!) Unless you spent the last 12 month encased in ice...we are all at different places than we were a year ago. For Instance, I was dealt a bad card yesterday when I was informed my position at Martin Luther Manor had been eliminated. Although I will continue there until the end of the month and was given another full month of severance pay... the proverbial rug was pulled out from under me. Now, I stand (rugless) at an unknown location very far from where I was just 365 days ago. At this point, it would be easy for me to complain and seek out the injustice... but just like a matter of minutes allows for a new start to the New Year, a matter of minutes can allow for a new start to a new chapter of my life, as well.

Along with this most recent life-altering debacle, the last couple of years have brought along with them relationship disappointments, missed opportunities, lost friendships, and poor reactions to situations beyond my control. In order for me to move forward...to continue growing... I need to put those things behind me and venture into the rugless unknown I previously spoke of.

Like I said before, not all of us have entered this new year in the same place, but all of us are changed. All of us (except, of course, those encased in ice) have a year of growth under our proverbial belts and we are called to embark upon this new year with gusto. Afterall, in the immortal words of Semisonic (circa 1999) "every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end".

G*night,
Tempa

"For our momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." 2nd Corinthians 4:17-18