Looking Back - Looking Forward

As I look back over 2011, I see a lot of things in my life.  At the risk of sounding the braggart, I grew as a human.  I grew in my trust in God.  Yet, at the same time, I admit that I am a weakling.  There are times when I wish to give up and scream “I don’t understand anything!” 

2011 was filled with answered prayer.  Again, at risk of sounding like I’m bragging, the prayers that my wife and I have seen answered are just too amazing to be coincidental.  Trying to list them from memory is tough, but here are a few. 

We prayed that our son would not have to deploy to Afghanistan.  Inexplicably, his deployment was cancelled.

Our son had duty on Thanksgiving Day.  We prayed that he’d be able to come home anyway.  Someone took his watch. 

Without going into detail, after a near-disaster by those that replaced me, I was restored to my former position at work.

We never really prayed for it, but we did occasionally mention how some extra money would really help us to help others, as well as set us up on a good path.  Completely by surprise, and again, leaving out details, $11,000 arrived in the mail.

We felt led to give some money to a complete stranger.  We did not wish to identify ourselves in the process, but after leaving the money in their mailbox, I decided, against the strong feeling that it wouldn’t matter, that I had to make sure they, and not the mailman, got the money.  So, I rolled by their house in my truck, and the husband was out front.  I yelled, “Hey, check your mailbox!”  He said, “Stop!  Stop!  Turn into my drive!  I got the money!  You did that?”  Well, I was busted.  He told me, “You have no idea how much we needed that money.  Thank you so much.”  I told him that I never wanted him to know that we gave the money, and I meant it when I said to him, “Thank God, because God made it possible.”  Aside from my failure to trust the strong signal God gave me that this man and his wife would get the money out of their mailbox before the mail man, this whole episode was an incredible blessing.

Honestly, I could go on, but I don’t have the time, and there has been so much answered prayer, that I’m actually losing track of it all.  I know that sounds a bit ungrateful, but I can’t help my memory.  It is what it is. 

I learned a lot over the year.  I’m amazed at the world’s western “democracies” and their power to kick the can down the road.  I don’t understand how they have managed to keep the global “Ponzi scheme” going, but they have.  I find it very disturbing though.  Why?  Because when they run out of cans to kick, the crash is going to be that much worse. 

But, back to God – a favorite subject of mine these days.  I would never expect those of you that do not believe to really listen to anything I have to say.  One can read my past blogs and see just what a failure I have been.  I never set out to fail, or to doubt, or to give my friends any reason to doubt – yet, here I am.  Honestly, I do not know how I went almost a decade without acknowledging God.  So many things happened – mostly for the negative – yet God had mercy on me and drew me back.  And that leads me to my prediction for 2012.  God will continue to grow me.  God will continue to work in my life, and I’ll report about that here as the months go by.