Impressed by a Hurricane 1

Dear 2015,

With no one around I sat comfortably, content and excited to meet you. You didn’t arrive with shouts of cheer instead it was a quiet, “Hey, I’m here” and you carried great plans for adventure and growth.

It didn’t take me long, as I was getting to know you, to realise that you were not what I expected. I guess the year before was so deliciously good that from you, I must have expected more. You weren’t more, you were ragingly different.  But that doesn’t mean you were less.

There were times when I thought you weren’t meant for me, as if you got the address wrong, you know, wrong person. You were hard and I was weak. I was not prepared for the challenges you called me to, at least not knowingly. You were often relentless and I recall many moments on my knees begging you to release me from the flames you put around me.

I’m not going to lie; I was more than ready to say goodbye to you. You exhausted me, the inner me. You exposed me, you frighten me, you blindsided me and you pushed me to the extreme edge of my comfort and I did not like it.

However, as I watched you disappear, I was glad. It wasn’t that I was relieved. I was impressed.

I was impressed with the way you came hard and fast and how you didn’t allow me time to overthink and back away. Everything happened unawares and you handed me the hardest situations to show me the deepest truths about myself, about life and about the people who are there walking with me.

You were a hurricane that tore through my life, it was wild, confusing and it was so messy but from the debris of 2015, the most beautiful blessings began to bloom and I am impressed.

Above all I realise as the new year arrives it is not so much about reinventing the way I do life with the time that is given to me as it is about reinventing the attitude with which I approach it.

My situations and what I do with them do not define me. It’s the way I perceive circumstances around me, the way I think in those situations, the way I believe, the way I trust and the way I hope that defines me. It is my inner world and where I go to nourish it that defines me.

So you didn’t just encourage me to adjust my attitude 2015, you place opportunity all around me that drove me to reinvent my approach.

The most significant detail that I will take along with me into the new year is a piece of wisdom offered to me by a gentle giant you introduced to me; Uncle D.G. who taught me that while we live our lives seeking to figure out the right or wrong in everything, this is wasted.

Instead, that fruit is only found in approaching the intricacies of life with the attitude that seeks to understand whether the thing we are facing is either helpful or harmful to the growth of our character or to the course of our lives. There is no such thing as right or wrong.

Thank You, 2015. While there were times that I believed you were harmful, you indeed helped me. There was nothing wrong nor anything right about you.

You just were.

You came quiet, persisted hard and you left strong.

And with a reinvented attitude,

I am impressed,

Love Jo-Anne.