Word for 2013: Change

"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."   ~Zora Neale Hurston

It is always interesting to try and sum up a year of your life in one word.  Previously, I've used fleeting, awestruck, and full.  There was really no other word that could possibly have been the one to describe 2013:  Change.  This was, above all else, a year of change. 

From the outside, my life certainly looks different than it did this time last year.  All I can say is that things happen as they should, even when those things may not make too much sense.  I managed to sort of stumble into my dream job, despite turning down the opportunity to interview more than once.  I had a great friend who managed to find me a house, which I bought sight unseen.  This boy who I met at a football game over a year ago appears to be someone who will be sticking around for quite some time. The fact that life can change so much in just 365 days is both terrifying and inspiring to me.

But change occurred on this inside as well.  I was inspired while celebrating marriages with College Roomie and Cousin Whitney.  I was touched when God used me to answer prayer for a stranger in a parking lot.  I was overwhelmed at the most thoughtful birthday gift I could imagine.  I was honored to give a Eulogy at the funeral of a great man.  The Boy from Texas has taught me what love looks like.  I was deeply moved in Europe by attending the Feast of the Infant of Prague, by seeing Pope John Paul II's kneeler, and standing on the same ground as so many who lost their lives due to hatred during World War II.  I hugged LOKG as she crossed her first half marathon finish line and burst into tears.  I was amazed standing in the center of Notre Dame stadium on that green grass.  I was terrified during a near-plane crash (yet still persistent enough to get off that plane once it landed!)  I am not he same person today as I was on January 2, 2013.  Nor should I be after these experiences.

I think, too, that 2013 was also a year of answers.  Perhaps of questions that I did not even know needed to be asked.  And although the answers I have received has brought with them some additional questions, I will look back on 2013 as having been a year of seeing how some of the pieces fit.  A year of change, in the best way.