as we come up on 2010

I find myself thinking of New Year's Resolutions. Many of my friends and loved ones make them and almost as many keep the ones they made. I don't do the whole New Year's resolution thing. Not because I believe I don't need to improve myself but because I hope that I am working every single day of every single year on becoming the woman God intends me to be. Often it seems that God has more faith in me than I do in myself but I am learning more and more to just step out in faith and follow where He leads. Over the last few years He has led me through some pretty scary times, lots of disappointments, broken promises, and lots of heartbreak. Over the last year He has led me through a time of healing, renewed faith, new involvements at church, and into a new relationship with an old friend...... the man I now believe was intended for me all along.

As I think back over the last several years and yes even as I contemplate the promise of the years to come I wonder how people who do not have faith in God survive life's tragedies and find the strength to keep going? How do they make the right choice even when it is hard? Sadly the answer for most is that they don't or at least not very well. I am praying now for someone who made wrong choices, selfish choices, over and over in their lives and is now blaming God for the end result of those choices. Actually, not even blaming God...... turning their back on God as if He never existed in their lives. It is so sad and hurts my heart as I imagine it must break His. He gave us free will to choose our own paths but it must be heartbreaking to Him when we choose wrong and even more heartbreaking to watch us suffer the consequences of those choices.