Where'd you get that tan?

Having a blog would be such a boon to my my myopic memory if i wasn't so adverse to living in the past. i was just about to launch on a retrospective of two thousand and ten when i realized... i have no idea what happened in two thousand and ten. So i let my mind wander back a bit... there was a new years eve party, i remember that. Couldn't have been that good a party then. There was a Christmas. i remember the big gift of the year being a big surprise, even to those of us who thought we knew what it was. (see last post for sorry tale) i remember Happ looking at me kind of funny when i made him read from the Bible to start Christmas day. Which, honestly, he should have seen coming after making a snide comment to me earlier in the month about how no one mentions Jesus during Christmas. That's what you get for being right.

Okay, so i've made it one week back into the Ten. Going a little further i see a totaled mynnie-van and a mynnie with yet new injuries to her already battered body. i see a best buddy battling a surprise cancer. Said battling looking mostly like sitting uncomfortably and waiting for other people to decide his fate for him. Lots of fun there. i see me nearly setting fire to a development. i see a father in intensive care with hoses and pipes leading to all major orifices and a family hoping for the best and worrying about the worst. i see me losing my job. And we're only into July!

So i'm thinking, wow, the last half of the year bit hard. i really don't remember anything all that bad ... in comparison... in the first half of the year. What did happen in the first half; how did i start it off? i decide to go back and peruse last year's blog-eggs. And there, second entry for the year in February is a post about my church closing. That's when two things hit me.

1. My memory apparently reaches some kind of limit at six months or six events. And...
2. Twenty-ten sucked.

Oh sure. The Silver Lining Society will certainly point out that all of these things led to a deeper awareness of God's provision and peace. And after all, hasn't losing my church forced me to ponder next steps? Hasn't losing my job brought more freedom and less stress (job related stress)? Didn't Pop come home after all? Isn't Ballisticat's prognosis hopeful and chemo going well? And wouldn't you say that Mynnie is far from as squished as she would have been had she hit the tree on the driver's side of the van? Not to mention the cool, new van, the Starship Mynnieprize. And wouldn't you say that this whole sorry tale of airsoft guns has taught Rascal a valuable lesson about how materialism does not equal peace, fulfillment or joy? Besides, he has a working gun now. Not the one he asked for, but it works.

Yes. Yes, you could say all of that and more. And still even be right.

And twenty ten still sucked. Just cause God brings you through the Valley of the Shadow of Death doesn't mean that it was like a vacation in Maui. It's still the Valley of the Shadow of Death. My skin may have a healthy, bronze glow but it came from passing through the fire, sometimes literally and not from sitting on a beach.

Now don't get me wrong. i'm not complaining. i'd rather go through the war with God than bask on a beach without Him. He is my treasure, my companion, my vacation and my joy. If here we are, almost a year later and i still have no church home, still have no job and no prospects of a writing/art career, if i glare as Cialis ads instead of laugh at them, if Monster Airsoft still hasn't returned my last angry letter or my money, i still have my Hope.

i said my second post in the Ten was about losing my church. As it turns out, my first one was about discovering that i am a hoper. i guess, as i tentatively stretch out one toe into the cataract that is twenty'leven, i should be thankful that my hope is not wishful thinking. Not denial. Not an inability to deal with my problems. It's not whistling through the graveyard. My hope is no paper tiger. It has been tested and found true. And it has a great tan!