Thinking about the New Year, I realize that I really am ready to WELCOME it! I am waiting with open arms and a ready heart to embrace all the change and newness. While it's not a new beginning, it is serving the purpose of the "easier way to carry on" I expressed in a former post. It is an excuse to not only buoy up and finally make the decisions I have been putting off, to fulfill bigger and better resolutions, but also to learn to accept. I not only choose to embrace what comes my way and what change springs itself upon me, but to embrace myself. I find I can be accepting of other people, but when it comes to myself I have little patience. Not that I regularly berate myself, but I simply tend to disregard my thoughts as either unimportant or too trivial to pay attention to. I am proud of my dreams, but my practical side shoves them into a cage, only to be let out to get some much-needed exercise on occasion. My mistakes, my choices which create difficult outcomes, my shortcomings, my mannerisms, my actions, my personality, my whole being is longing for acceptance. Whose isn't? Why not forget trying to find acceptance through others eyes when I can give it what it needs myself. Why not like myself the way I am, because that's how God wants us to view ourselves. Of course improvement is needed, but it is so much easier to be better and kinder when one doesn't feel threatened. I find this concept very freeing. With my approval and God's acceptance, I think this year had better watch out.
I feel like the cover of a comic book, with the me being the superhero clad in flamboyant costume exploding through the cover, captured in a kung-fu pose, ready to face all evil forces and terrible foes. With my new found strengths my muscles bulge, my agility increases, and my eyes glint with a terrible sparkle of joy, energy, truth, and strength for whatever attempts to thwart my happiness. The fire within me has been rekindled, bursting forth into ardent flame. I have not regained my strength, my strength has regained me. Look out world, I am waking.