A week late...Starting 366 days of JOY

Well, I haven't even visited my own blog in months and can hardly believe it has been 5 months since I have written anything. And then I come here and the last post causes tears to well up in my eyes again. I guess it is fair to say I am still grieving my dad's loss. Sometimes when I drive by the neighborhood where I last had any real contact with him it surfaces, but then I come here and read my last typed words and it is unthinkable and unbearable. How can the heart even imagine such horrible suffering and pain? 2011 was a really rotten and a really great year all in one. The rotten being my sin and grieving the physical and eternal loss of my earthly father with the ensuing doubts and fist clenching and fists beating the air and screaming internally and sometimes externally "Why!!???" The rotten being me using every form of escapism I can find besides drinking and drugs, losing myself in Netflix late at night, Facebook all day, or whatever else I can run to besides of arms of my Heavenly Father. The rotten year of a terrible backslidden condition where there is hardly any prayer or Bible reading because I just get tired of always feeling like I don't measure up and always bumbling around in my feeble attempts at prayer. The year of confusion. Just what does a relationship with God look like? How do I approach Him? To confess the truth, I have hardly ever approached with anything but terror and shame. I believed the Gospel with all my heart when I was 5 years old and begged God to save me. And now I am 40 and still struggling with assurance. But in an irony that is almost hard to believe 2011 was a year when I was about as spiritually barren as I could it was also the year when He is assuring me that I am still His. He is absolutely determined (which Im very thankful for) to let me know it is ALL ABOUT HIM and HIS LOVE FOR ME. So I feel like I am rambling on here, but truthfully I am just writing from a stream of consciousness and processing all that last year held. I was glad to say goodbye to that year and mildly hopeful about 2012. Well, there I go again, basing the years success or lack of success on my abilities. There is a great deal of fear heading into this year when I look at myself. I mean, my kids are not exactly homeschool poster children academically or spritually. All I can ever seem to look at is my horrible failure as a mother. And I won't even GO there when it comes to being a wife. Let's just say, my poor husband!!

So anyway, back to the original reason for this post. I purposed in my heart for this year to focus only on the positive things God is doing and has done. Being such a complainer and tending to focus on the negative means it will take a purposeful and resolute heart to do this. It will also take some God glasses. Oh, how I need those. I need to KNOW what is true and believe it and internalize it and never let go of it. And so I have decided to start my gratitude journal again and journaling here how the Lord is making this change. I WANT JOY back. I want to be changed. Truthfully, part of me is scared to death for how the Lord will teach this stubborn child these lessons she's been so slow to learn. Oh, Lord, all I want for this new year is a teachable and submissive, quiet heart and to never ever question or doubt Your goodness again. I confess my rotten ungratefulness publicly and ask for Your cleansing and forgiveness. I miss You. I really do.