2011...

"All I know is: the choices we make, dictate the lives that we lead. To thine own self be true." -Renaissance Man

"What is this life I stumbled into? Where's it gonna take me? Where's it gonna take you" -Andrew Allen

2011 was an eventful year. But in all fairness, isn't that what we say at the end of EVERY year? I think when we get to this time of year, it's just kind of the norm to talk about how much we've changed, about how much different the year turned out than we expected, about how surprised we were with how things turned out. So I'm not going to do that. There is enough of that to go around. After 365 days, if nothing changed and there weren't little surprises every day, THAT would be something pretty crazy. So instead, this is just some random things 2011 taught me:

Change happens every day. It's not a bad thing or a good thing. It's just a beautiful part of life. People change. It's what keeps life exciting.

We never find ourselves in places by mistake. Furman was not always the place of my dreams. There are a lot of things about Furman that I totally disagree with, but at the end of my 4 years there was nowhere I would have rather been, and I know that was where God meant for me to do college.

It's all about relationships, stupid. At the heart of it all, the most important things we have are the god who created us and the people he has placed in our lives. It's when I lose sight of this and my priorities get lost that I struggle and life is not to the fullest.

The people you live with can make your life so much better, if you can fight the cabin fever! Living with people is hard (oh dear, isn't that what marriage is, like, 100% of the time...?) But when you are surrounded by people who support and encourage you, the journeys of life become so much more exciting.

Break-ups can bring out the most selfish in people. But let me explain. It's so easy to say, "He (or she) will never find someone who could give them what I did or be as good for them as I was. They don't deserve me anyways." I did the break-up thing twice this year, and yeah it was no fun either time, and I did some of the above. But who am I kidding? When you break up with someone, it's because there is someone better out there for each of you, someone who can love you a thousand times better. That's what I hope for her.

Also, people, especially teenagers, should stay away from Facebook statuses and Twitter in the immediate aftermath of break-ups (maybe they should just avoid it all together as it is...).

Everything is a "God thing." Every time I hear "Wow, that was such a God thing" after something good works out, I wonder to myself, "What about when things didn't work out so well?" Is it only a God thing when good things happen? Is God not involved when we don't like what happens? Not at all. He is in the midst of everything, the good and the bad, the joyous and the painful, working for our good.

No day was meant to be wasted. God didn't give us breath to just convert it to carbon dioxide. He gave it to us with purpose.

forever unfinished...