My Annual Review

Having a bad memory is not fun. You would think that I would get used to it, but actually it annoys me even more today than it did yesterday. Or, more accurately, it annoys me more this year than last year. I cannot even recall 2011, and yet something important must have happened! Life is full of blessings and burdens, good times and crummy times, joy and sorrow, laughter and sobbing.


I write a Christmas Newsletter for the explicit purpose of making myself review what God has done for me, sometimes even through me, and often in spite of me. He is a good God, needs nothing to exist and yet chose to love a people for Himself, and gain glory for Himself by giving them dates and times and calendar years to keep track of it all.

One of my favorite gifts this year combined my need for keeping track of time with my love of pictures, and my adoration of the blessing of my grands. It was a picture filled 2013 calendar and it is extra special as I know how much work went into making it! God ultimately blesses me by giving me this luxury of time tracking, yet He didn't need to. He is apart from time, timeless, if you will, and remembers all of us, each tear and guffaw of laughter uttered from our individual lips., and should He need a date, He could recall it instantly. I love that God is bigger than I can think or imagine! I love that some days He lets me think and ponder and wonder at His majesty, and He still remains more. More than I can imagine, better than I can dream, more Sovereign and special than my heart can propose or suppose.

This last summer, in the delightful month of June, when my 12th grandson was born~ I was called to immediately fly from Tennessee, where I was leisurely celebrating my sister's New Home purchase and end of chemotherapy and joy of remission, to step onto an airplane.
I hate flying. I not only hate flying, but I am terrified of flying. I am not only terrified of flying, I have a phobia, irrational and especially incapacitating when I am given the option of thinking about airplanes. I even avoid airports and when a plane flies overhead I am known to duck , or look anywhere but up. Yup, full blown terror.

The reason I was called to do such an act of bravery, was because of the birth of my new grandson Theodore. He was, as anyone having read my Christmas letter knows,  born and overcame a terrific birth scare in part because of God's gracious disposing of grace toward him(and us). The brain therapy cooling cap used was a modern day miraculous device, and a truly amazing piece of research development and technology!

Back to my flight. Booked within an hour, paid for by Theodore's gracious great grandmother, transported to the airport by my New Home owning celebratory cancer- free sister.  Some would call this exciting and wonderful, the chance to arrive within hours when previously scheduled to drive for days. I called it Horrific. I was terrified beyond belief. Imagine, my newborn grandson at death's door, literally having just arrived on earth, and me convinced that this  airplane was my ticket to eternity at every bump, jostle and jolt?

Remembering quite clearly now: me begging God for calm, asking Him for peace, pleading with Him for mercy, reminding Him how much we needed this baby boy to live? assuring Him I trusted His choices and decisions. Forcing myself to chant "Susan, you choose here either FEAR or FAITH. There is and was and never will be an 'in between'." I chose faith. Not because of a guaranteed results, either with the flight or with the baby, but because of the Pilot Physician I was talking to. God. Jehovah Jirah. Redeeming Savior. Wonderful Counselor . Prince of Peace. Comforter. I Am. The One Who made me and sustained me through so many places already on my life journey. I chose to trust Him again on June 22, 2012 in the skies about 30,000 feet from the ground.

My annual review is what I call this post. I sometimes get scared on New Year's Day as I anticipate what might lie ahead. Reviewing the past year is my way of remembering the one thing I DO remember: God is with me. God loves me. God will walk with me no matter where this journey takes me in 2013. It is as easy as it is difficult. FAITH.

Welcome 2013.