goodbye 2010 - i'm moving on!

December is drawing to a close and so, of course, is the year of 2010. It is around this time of year that many of us take the time to slow down a little, ponder the events of the previous year, and evaluate our lives a bit. With renewed determination, we realign our goals, dig for our work-out clothes, and determine to do a little better this time. I was hoping to take some time to reflect, gather my thoughts, and share with you some of what I have come to realize about myself during this magnificent year...but I haven’t even had time to sit long enough to pull out my journal or hop on Skype to talk with my family in weeks! I just got home from work and now I am sitting at my computer next to a zebra-print suitcase and a bus ticket for Osaka, Japan that leaves in under an hour. My heart is tender, my mind is racing, and my head aches from weeks of little sleep and over-scheduling. Still, even as I type this I cannot help but smile with contentment and gratitude for the conditions of my life exactly as they are right now...right at this very moment.

Tonight I’m taking a 12-hour bus ride to Osaka and then I’m switching to a train and heading for another 8 hours to Hiroshima, one of the sites of the Atomic bomb that destroyed the city in 1945. I’m meeting up with friends as I go and steadily working my way around Hiroshima, Miyajima, Kobe, Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, back up to Tokyo, and eventually home to Sendai! I’ll get home on the 10th of January and will then leave the next day to attend an English Camp with a group of high school students until the 15th. I teach the Gospel Doctrine lesson in church on the 16th, and then it’s back to work on the 17th—the day before my 24th birthday! I can hardly believe it! December isn’t even over yet and I already feel like it’s almost the end of January!

This trip is going to be exhausting but amazing and I can’t wait to get started on it, but that doesn’t leave me much time now to intimately discuss the thoughts and feelings deeply stirring within me. Let it suffice to say for now that 2010 has been a year of healing for me. Truthfully, I didn’t realize this would be such a year of letting go, moving forward, and fulfilling my dreams. Coming to japan has proved to be one of the single best decisions I’ve ever made in my life and I will never be the same. This land, its people, everything has completely captured my heart and healed the parts I didn’t even know were broken. I cannot recall ever feeling so much constant JOY and gratitude for my life. I’ve always tried to be a happy, optimistic person, but this is different...there is a difference between happiness and joy and what I feel consuming every corner of my being is a deep, peaceful, lasting joy.

I am richly blessed...I know that God has always been with me, but I have never felt His presence so intensely and continuously as I have since I first stepped into Tokyo NINE MONTHS ago, today. Whoa. I can hardly comprehend that it has been nine months... and now I look at my life and I am humbled to tears. If only I could begin to express the goodness of God...if only a language existed that contained words I could use to articulate the depth of my gratitude, of my faith, of my awe for my Heavenly Father and the abundant goodness He has bestowed upon me... It is remarkable...

These feelings, of course, are impossible to adequately express, but we’ve all felt love, fear, anger, passion, and faith so intensely at some point in our lives that words aren’t actually all that necessary to communicate such raw feelings, are they? As I mentioned in my last post, it seems to me that we connect to each other through our experiences more than our actual words...that we can actually feel each other’s hearts when we let ourselves. I think this is why we are able to relate so intimately with each other and why other people’s words, song lyrics, or art stir us so intensely. Sometimes the simple realization that someone else has felt what you are feeling is as intense as the feeling in and of itself, isn’t it?

I had a moment like this recently. I was listening to my iPod on shuffle recently and a song began to play that I didn’t even realize I had. It was a country song and I almost clicked passed it, but decided to let it play a bit...my heart was immediately captured by what I heard and I realized that the message of this song has definitely proved to be, as my oldest brother described it, a “theme song” of mine for 2010--one of many. I wish I had time to write more tonight, but let these words give voice to my heart for now. I will write more as soon as I can and although I already know better than to make unrealistic goals for 2011 like giving up chocolate or determining to write a blog post every day, I can say that I know 2011 is going to be even more incredible than 2010.

“There comes a time in everyone’s life when all you can see are the years passing by and I’ve made up my mind that those days are gone.” I’m moving on, moving forward, and moving up in 2011. There is no time to let up, give up, or back down; my goals are too high and my passion is too deep for mediocrity. Ready or not, World: here I come!

I've dealt with my ghosts and I've faced all my demons
Finally content with a past I regret
I've found you find strength in your moments of weakness
For once I'm at peace with myself
I've been burdened with blame, trapped in the past for too long
I'm movin' on

I've lived in this place and I know all the faces
Each one is different but they're always the same
They mean me no harm but it's time that I face it
They'll never allow me to change
But I never dreamed home would end up where I don't belong
I'm movin' on

I'm movin' on
At last I can see life has been patiently waiting for me
And I know there's no guarantees, but I'm not alone
There comes a time in everyone's life
When all you can see are the years passing by
And I have made up my mind that those days are gone

I sold what I could and packed what I couldn't
Stopped to fill up on my way out of town
I've loved like I should but lived like I shouldn't
I had to lose everything to find out
Maybe forgiveness will find me somewhere down this road
I'm movin' on

I'm movin' on
I'm movin' on

Thank you all for your love, your support, and your faith. I am grateful for your willingness to share in this journey with me. Now, I better hurry and catch my bus!!

xxx

P.S. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!!