Happy New Year Dear Readers. I trust the first day of a new year finds your heart and life filled with more blessings than sorrow. For I also know that each one of us has experienced both. Some of us have had greater sorrow and/or blessings than others, but if you are reading this, you are blessed.

In one of my blogs, I apologized for sharing and had removed that blog. Then I had many of you urging me to “keep on” for sharing one’s heart and life causes others to understand each of us is “human.” We laugh and cry. We shed tears of both joy and happiness, but we are the “one” God created us to be.

Thus, this brings me to this day; January 1, 2022. Another calendar is history and a new one begins. I’m weary of hearing people say “this year will be your year.” My year for what? Every year that God gives us is “our year.” This was “my year” in some ways, but in many other ways, it was not my year.

The saga of my life’s journey which began over ten years ago has impacted every day, week and month of my life. So like many of you reading this, I had many difficult and challenging times this past year. However, many of you prayed with and for me during those long, five years that I tried to sell my home in Oklahoma. I don’t know today nor while it was happening why God “dragged” it on so long. Yet He did and I had to accept it.

My Oklahoma home sold in January and closed in March. I had an extremely difficult move from that house to this one, but God was right there with me.  Also, how could I possibly reflect on the year without the dozen houses I bid on and lost?  I left a depressed real estate market in Oklahoma to come to a greatly inflated and “hot” real estate market in Texas.

As I spent four full months living in and out of hotels and an Air B/B, my prayers were fast and furious. My two small suitcases contained my full wardrobe during those four months, as all my earthly possessions were jammed into storage units. I continued to ask God “when?”

My prayers never ceased for I knew God had “His” house for me. Finally, in July, I moved into an older home which needed much love and attention. I realized then my prayers to locate a home paled in comparison to the prayers to repair and/or renovate this house.

It is a work in progress, but God is good. We sing the chorus “God is good all the time. All the time God is good.” As we close out this year, at times that is difficult to grasp. Yet God is not only good, He’s wonderful. I now stand on the first step of the first day-of the first month- of a new year. I proudly proclaim. Here I am God-use me for whatever you desire of me for this year.

We will all be facing something in 2022. We may not know what it is today, but what a joy to know that God will be right there with us, no matter what awaits us. Psalm 25:8 NIV,  “Good and upright is the Lord…”