one last day

It's down to the hours now.  Six hours and twenty minutes before this year is done.  Before it's over.

Oh how I wish it were magic, that ball dropping, that ten second countdown.  As if... after 3, 2, 1... everything really did change.  Reset.  Turn a page and start over.

So much happened in 2011.  Isolated events, which changed our lives.  There were beautiful moments from the get-go, when we realized things would never be the same.

Much of the spring is lost somewhere in the recesses of my memory.  Like packed up boxes you shove to the corner.  I remember thinking I was leaving.  I remember trying to wrap my mind around being gone for a whole year.  But only vaguely.  What I really remember is the moment I woke up and realized I didn't want to.  And my path changed again.

My little sister graduated high school.  A bittersweet reminder of how quickly time passes and how much my heart belongs to my three sisters.

At some point in that lost span of time, I turned 23.  Finally the age when I thought everything was going to happen.  The special year that had been burned into my mind from an early age.  I'd always known it would be important, this year.  How could I have known?

It was very quickly after this milestone birthday that things did change.  I started quitting.  Paring down my schedule, walking away from roles of leadership, breaking down old boxes of toxicity, thinking I was going to get better.  That I was going to make myself well.

The month of June came, highlighted by an urban camp with some of my kids.  2011 brought me Urban Impact, I do remember this.  And am forever and eternally grateful.

But it the midst of the "quitting" and the "walking away" and the "resting" I was supposed to do, I spun around on my heels and submerged myself in some real inner city work.  And in June, I spent a whole week with some of these precious children.

But we also went to Icthus that week.  Taking a few teenagers with us to listen to the Christian hip hop and rap artists.  After a bet over a funnel cake, Kelsey and I met a pair of men.  After 23 years of believing, deeply, that I was unattractive and undesirable, in a moment there it all changed.  Like the I-75, I-64 split.  One road became two.  And I veered left.

The month of July is lost on me.  My blogs show no record of it, and neither does my memory.  I think I spent most of it drinking tequila at the pool with my step mother.  Tuesday and Thursday nights on Limestone with two girls with the same name -- one who would cherish me, one who would try and destroy me.  I think I spent July meeting people who did not know me.  Learning how to dodge persistent men, and how to get their attention, all in the same breath.  There was another camp in July too... an arts camp.  Teenagers learning how to think in a brand new way, to see with eyes scrubbed fresh and skin peeled back and sensitive.

August came.  I was supposed to leave on a year long trip, and instead I woke up under far different circumstances.  Laying beside my own mistakes and choices, the morning dawned and a squad launched.  And I was not with them.  Instead, I would drive to Richmond.  Steal a last kiss in a Dairy Queen parking lot.  Pack up a duffel bag and casually head to the airport.

August was Haiti.  Hot and sweaty and full of laughter.  Of remembering and "I think I can's".  Living with bubbles and children in my lap and dirty feet and looking through a lens.  He stole my heart, the quiet one in the corner.

Haiti was an escape.  A familiar place on an unfamiliar highway.  Like I took a pit stop, put all else on pause, and regained and recollected my heart and soul.  Testing brokenness, checking strength, challenging endurance.

I came home to a tiny little apartment right on campus.  With every intention of making this space my sanctuary, it only became my place for hiding my secrets.  The place I came once it was dark and stayed until it was light.  Apartment 6.  It is dusty with all the knowing, and the walls creak and moan with the heaviness of it.

September, like most of 2011, was full of mistakes, classes, and bachelorette parties.  I was chin deep in a 250 hour practicum with Urban Impact.  Stretching some muscles and conditioning myself in ways I'd never anticipated.  Working with 25 children who would steal whatever was left of my heart.

In September I got my hopes up.  And I was let down again.  I loaded up my car with another man's junk and helped him move, hearing the wind chimes and knowing that despite the running I was doing, God knew exactly where I was.  He was going to find me, wherever I tried to hide.  So I decided to quit hiding.  I ran smack dab into confession on Pine Street.  Pulled up into a familiar hug and ineffectively dodging the truth.  Confession has a way of letting all the air out of your defenses.

In October... I gained a brother.  My sister got the wedding of her dreams and dedicated her life and love to a man who actually deserves all of it.  Once again, our family dynamics changed.  He makes us better, this brother.  A gift.  Not just to my sister.  But to me.  This Christmas he hugged me, not letting go.  He held the back of my head and whispered, only half joking, "it's going to be ok, Anna.  It's going to be ok."

November, also a blur.  Lessons learned and heart developing more calluses.  It seems, the only ones who can break through the hardness, are small people with lots of love to give.

Ever since December, I have been fast forwarding to this day.  To the end of this year.  I've been beckoning it, urging it to come faster.  I've misplaced blame on the year 2011.  For breaking me in all new ways.  In destroying fortresses I have built and exposing a foundation stronger than I'd realized.

I picked up on a pattern.  Of a good year, followed by a bad year, followed by a good year.  This gets me a little giddy inside, knowing that if the pattern is true, a good year is coming.  That starting tomorrow, I will begin the climb into blessing.

Over the past few weeks God has sent encouragement upon encouragement my way.  Through random texts and facebook messages.  He has been reminding me that He has a plan.  And that through the sticky mess that is 2011, He has proven His faithfulness.  He is exercising His redemptive nature.  Beauty for ashes.  An invisible summer, found in the depths of winter.

In 2011, I learned where to place my walls.  Vulnerability and confession were abounding in the safest places.  I clung to the truth and consistency of a few, beautiful men and women whom God has given me as a gift.

In 2011, I found my confidence.

In 2011, I reestablished my passion.

In 2011, I lost a lot of battles.  And a lot of ground.

There is one last day.  Now, only five and a half hours until it's over.  I'm sitting here in the dark, getting ready to cook dinner for two of my best friends.  One who just got engaged, only a few hours ago.  I am thinking about my resolution this time last year.  To do better.

I failed.

But that happens sometimes.  Sometimes we try things and we fail.  We have good intentions and we mean well.  And we have no way of knowing what's coming our way.  No way to really prepare for the battles we are going to fight.  To predict the ways we are going to turn.

2011 was about a plot change.

Veering off onto a different highway, which would take me in a different direction, directly into the grace and mercy of God the Father.  Lots of construction on this highway.  Lots of fog and guard rails.

I did not do better this year.  That is my confession.  May it bounce off the walls and seep under the door.  May it be known that I never claim to have it all together.  That I walk around in my hi-top sneakers and listening to India Arie and cheering on the UK Wildcats and catching the eye of dark men and stealing the attention of small children.  That I am more and different than most will ever know.  And those of you who take the time to see, to learn, have my devotion.

I did not do better this year.  But there is hope in demolition.  In the middle of all kinds of dust and debris, bent metal, and caution tape.  There's a promise of reconstruction.  Of rebuilding.  Of sweeping away the old, to make room for the new.

One last day.  Just one, last day.