The end of another year

And another year has ended.  Tomorrow is the first day of 2009.

The end of the year is a time when many look back, and I am no real exception.  I can't remember what my goal at the beginning of the year was, but I do know what's happened and what I've done this year.  So, here are the major things that have happened this year.

--I have learnt to play the piano with both hands.  Finally I've started to take advantage of the piano that's been around longer than me, finally I'm using it for something other than melody lines for hymn tunes.  I play it incredibly badly because I have no real sense of time, but I play it much better than this time last year.

--I woke up to the implications of 1 Corinthians 11:1-15, and started covering my head in church.  And most of the time outside church, too.  I have always liked hats, and I only stopped wearing them because no one else wore them, so I am now growing closer to my childhood ideal of a hatted woman with a wicker basket.  And I don't care.

So, inside the house I wear a bandanna, outside I wear a winter hat (because it's winter) or a headband.  Church is normally a winter hat.  I do love scarves, and I would probably wear them if they weren't connected with all sorts of other religions.

--My family left our church—that would be the one that seemed sent from God.  Long story, which I'm not prepared to go into here.  Anyway, we are now pretty churchless: we attend churches where dad plays the organ, and we occasionally visit our friends' church—though we haven't done that for a while now.  I should note that the churches where dad plays are not the best.

--However, all things work together for good.  Since leaving the church we used to attend, I've been finding regular Bible reading easier:  I have to read and find for myself, because the churches dad plays at sure won't do it for me.  And so Bible reading is something that I must cling to, because if that stops, drifting away from God is a very real possibility.   I need to get prayer sorted, too, though.

--I still do not know what I will be doing come next August.  I know what I won't be doing—attending university—but I don't know what I will actually do instead.  I would like to fill my days with a part time job (because I must earn money: a steady and regular amount of money coming in is almost independence) and voluntary work (because I want to be useful.).

However, I didn't tell this to relations at the annual Christmas get together, preferring instead to scandalize them by saying very firmly that I wasn't sure who decreed that as soon as somebody got old enough to do things they should immediately saddle themselves with a huge debt.  I'm not sure how well this went down, because mum chipped in almost immediately afterwards to say that I'd learnt how to run a home.

Well, that statement was like a red rag to several bulls.  The only saving grace was that it wasn't me who was trying to console them with 'well, I know how to run a home'.


Next year, if the Lord wills it, I should have more to report.  Changes.  Change has to come, and it will come.  However, I do feel that this year's been quite productive because I no longer feel directionless and lost.  I know where I want to go.  I just don't know how to get there.  And so it only remains to begin to chase the shadows of what I want in the hope that once the shadow has been caught, the substance will be obtained soon after.

So that's how I'll spend 2009.  Chasing shadows.