The Year In Review

Dear family and friends,

Happy New Year's Eve! As is usually my custom, I find myself in a very reflective mood as one year closes and a new one stretches out before me. Therefore, I decided to share my ramblings and thoughts with all of you, the people that have walked through this last year with me.

As I am sitting here typing this, I am enjoying my last day at home before I head back to Boston tomorrow. It has been a really nice break to be here and enjoy spending time with many of you - people that are a part of my story and who hold a very dear place in my heart, even though I don't see you very often now that I live 1100 miles away. Thank you so much for taking time out of your holiday time to visit with me and let me know how much I am loved. Knowing that people here care and love me and are praying for me really does make it easier to move forward with life in a brand new place. Please keep praying in 2008! :)

So 2007.....what a year it has been....this has been the hardest year of my life and also one of the best years as I have discovered in a lasting and tangible way that God is who He says He is, and He is all that we need. While I would have never chosen to walk through a divorce, as I look back on this past year, I can say with confidence and thankfulness that God has met me where I was, and He has bound up my broken heart. The healing He alone has done in my heart and life this year are indescribable. In early 2007, I never thought I would be where I am at the end of the year - enjoying life and filled with hope about both today and tomorrow. Thanks be to God for that miracle.

2007 also brought a move to a different part of the country, as you all know. Moving to Boston has been one of the best things I have ever done. Getting outside of myself and seeing a different culture and being around different people...all of this has helped move me forward in the grieving and healing process. God's story is bigger than we can comprehend, and the world is a lot bigger than many of us have seen. Having a taste of another part of God's world has shown me that His church is everywhere, I could go anywhere and be fine, and I really am a grown up. :) I have loved meeting new people and living by the ocean and seeing snow and all of the other amazing adventures I have had in these last six months. It's hard to believe I've already been in Boston for six months! But what's really cool is that my life is richer for having shared these last six months with people that I didn't know at the beginning of the summer. And now I can't imagine my life without these people as a part of the fabric of it. I am thankful God pushed me out of my comfort zone to a new place, and I am looking forward to continuing to build relationships with people that I am only just now getting to know.

I'm not gonna lie - I am thankful that 2007 is coming to an end! :) I am ready to put this past year behind me. Despite that fact, it has been a defining year for me, and I know that my life will never be the same because of all that I have gone through, learned, and discovered throughout the circumstances that were encountered. As 2008 looms before me, I have much excitement and anticipation to see what God has in store for me in this next year.

My prayer for 2008 is that God will continue His work in my life and that I will allow Him to continue to refine those areas of my life that need His refinement. I am also praying for a year filled with confident joy. I think I've become a bit more of a realist and cynic in this last year - not a good thing - I didn't need anymore of that! :) Knowing that bad things can and do happen can sometimes cause me to live in expectation of them occurring. Instead, I want to live in expectation of great and exciting things happening, knowing that if not so great things do happen, God will be enough. It's a fine line between those two things, but I hope to live this year with joyful expectation. I am also praying that God will continue to heal my heart in a deeper level, and that I won't be afraid to live and love and dream and hope in whatever circumstances He brings my way.

Thank you so much to all of you for your support, encouragement, love and most of all your prayers. I would not have made it through this last year without my brothers and sisters in Christ. My life is richer for having you in it, and I am thankful God has given me such awesome people to walk through life with.

I pray that as we all walk through 2008, we will live in this moment, enjoying every second that God allows us to have. I pray that we will love others well, and that we will make a deliberate choice to seek out and love "the least of these". And I pray that we will live in light of eternity and not waste the time that God has allotted for us here on this earth, with the end goal being the spread of His name and His renown, for His glory.

Happy New Year! I love you all...
Tiffany