A New Year

Are you ready for it? Don't you stand at the end of a year and wonder how your life will have changed by this time next year?
How will you be different?
Will your family have changed by adding someone new or saying goodbye to someone you love?
Will your health be the same or will you be battling a challenge you can't imagine at this moment?
Will you be more successful or will your dreams seem crushed?
A year can bring so much change and it can be frightening to look ahead into that dark unknown and wonder.
I cannot fathom facing the unknown without the One who designed it holding my hand.
I had no idea that Christmas of 1997 would be the last one I'd spend with my father. Or that New Year's Day of 2001 would start the countdown to my mother's death 29 days later.
Who could have predicted on New Year's Day 2004 that by the next year, my eleven-year-old child would have suffered a life-altering brain injury? Aren't you glad we don't know these things ahead of time? I couldn't take it.
But I know the One who holds tomorrow already has it under control. That's the only way I can face with confidence another year of unknown. If you don't know him, let this be the year you place your hand in His so that next New Year's Day, you can say, "Who'd ever imagine this would be the first year I learned how to live!"