Reflections

I like to reflect and think about what happened in the past year. To be honest with you all, it's been one of those really hard, amazing and tough years for me. I got my first horse. I have gone through some health things that were not fun at all. I graduated from Highschool. I had my first E.R. accident and visit. I couldn't find a regular part-time job, but I got to work at a seasonal job with some of the best employees you could ever wish to meet. I've accomplished far more with Bodie than I imagined we could go. I've had some of my worst moments with Bodie this year.
To everything that had a bad side to it, God has also blessed me with the good side. There is always a good side to every bad thing, believe me, there is. I've gone through so much more than what I mention in the above paragraph. I can only marvel at what God's accomplished in my life.

Another thing I like to do is evaluate my goals from the last year and see how I did. This is what I posted January of the beginning of the year.

1) Read the entire Bible over again and highlight key verses

ANSWER: I read the Bible pretty much every day this year, but I didn't finish it and I didn't do much highlighting. I would like to retain this goal for this year.

2) Journal every day instead of only during school weeks

ANSWER: Haha, no, not even close. I missed five months. :P I usually do that. But I did do a lot more blogging this year.

3) Take each day as a gift, not an expectation

ANSWER: I do believe I did better on this than the past year. Though of course I had my moments, I feel like God has helped me be thankful for every day. I could still use work on this.

4) Live each day to the fullest

ANSWER: Again, I feel I did better on this than I have in the past. But I still need work in this area.

5) Take Bodie through the entire fundamentals level of Downunder Horsemanship.

ANSWER: Nope, didn't do it. :) I came to a conclusion on a couple of things and decided what Bodie needed more than anything else was for me to work with him as his partner, not his trainer. I needed to work more on my attitude and expectations on myself before I got to work on him. I think this next year we're going to be spending more time on his part of the deal though.

6) Get Bodie to the point he can be ridden by anyone

ANSWER: He is far, far better in this area. Mostly, he hasn't been ridden by anyone else because I was afraid he'd hurt someone. So I didn't really test this out. When my friend rode him though, she was able to keep him under control, which is great! :)

7) Go to my first horse show? Not sure about that one as I'm not a very competitive person. I just like having fun. :)

ANSWER: YES! I did this. It was a blast! Didn't win anything, but who cares? I had fun!

8) Rewrite my first book

ANSWER: No. I didn't even get started on it. What I ended up putting all my time into was my first Contemporary Young Adult novel, Free. I am on my second edit on it and so far, it's 90,000 words and about 350 pages. I decided to put all my energy into this project after my mentor took a look at my stories and told me it was time I got serious with one of my books and pursued publishing. I took her suggestion to heart and decided to work on the book she liked the most, which back then had a different story-line and character names. :)

In all, I didn't do so well on my goals. But that's okay. I learned so much this year. God always has a different plan for me than what I originally think. Goals aren't there to make us feel guilty. Goals are there to help us aim higher.

A New Year is almost upon us. It's time to think about some new goals. What do I want to accomplish next year? What does God want me to accomplish next year? On January 1st, 2015, I will post my new goals. Until then, I hope showing you my failures to meet my mark shows you it doesn't so much matter if you don't reach your quota so much as it matters what you learned in the last year. The most valuable lessons I learned this year are these:

1) I learned that you must trust God no matter what you feel on the inside

2) Faith is a daily struggle. One day you may have full faith in God, the next day you have none. Everyday you must give up your will and have faith God knows what He's doing.

3) All sin is equal in God's eyes. No sin is greater than another, and no sinner is worse than another.

4) God forgives all sins. Past, present and future. When we confess them that's it, we're free. We do not have to feel guilty anymore.

5) Guilt is not from God. God convicts, not condemns. If you feel miserable, like you're the worst person in the world and can't shake the guilt that comes with it, chances are that's the devil, not God. God doesn't want us to feel horrible, he wants to prick our consciences so we confess our sins and he can forgive us and make us feel clean again. The devil wants us to feel like God can't forgive us, and in a way that's pride. If we feel God doesn't forgive us, we're rejecting the fact he died on the cross for our sins and that we're no worse (or better) than anyone else. By rejecting his forgiveness, we're saying He's a liar and that He didn't mean it when he said "Your sins are forgiven." That's pride.

I've learned far more than this, but these are my five basic outlines. I hope I've encouraged you in some way.

God bless and have a wonderful New Year. See you in a year. :)