After looking through lists of all of the recipes I've tried the past year and all of the craft projects I've attempted (some successfully!), I realized that the best way to catch up and capture the past year would be to talk about this little jar that sits quietly on an end table in my living room.
It's a combination of 2 pins, actually. First, the quote, which I'll get to later. But the project itself was year-long and something I'm glad I stuck with throughout all of 2013. This pin led me to one of the greatest ideas that has been shared with me in a long time- writing down all of the "good things" that happen throughout the year and keeping them in a jar to be looked at on New Year's Eve.
I started early- January 1, to be exact- and tried to add at least one "good thing" each week. Some weeks had more going on than others- it evened out in the end- so I ended up with 61 scraps of paper to remember 2013.
My "good things" ranged from the little things- phone calls from friends, excitement about the weather, something that made me laugh or smile- to the bigger, more significant things- major accomplishments and recognition at work, events that made me realize my acceptance in a new group of friends, and a renewal of my faith- but it all played a part in making my 2013 the year that it was.
Part of the reason that I'm so thankful for my jar of good things was that, in spite of 2013 being what I would have called one of the best years of my life so far, the last 3 weeks were some of the worst, after a tragic injury resulted in a sudden and significant loss in my family.
My jar became documentation of the year (and here's where that quote that I have SO grown to love comes into play) and allowed me to see how all of the seemingly "little" things in life came together to profoundly impact my attitude and outlook on life to prepare me for what I would come to endure at the end of the year.
I ended up in a place where all I could do was rely on my faith in God, and as I looked through the scraps of paper that documented my year, I could clearly see how He had so perfectly orchestrated the events in my life to bring me to that place of comfort and trust in Him and truly prepared me to be able to handle what was to come.
I'm in awe of the way my Creator works, and I love having my jar sitting in my living room as a reminder of the way He has moved in my life.
I thought about starting another jar for 2014, but time got away from me the first few months of the year. I'm using a journal instead to try to better document the "little things" that make me happy this year, knowing full well that they may turn out to be the big things. Some days it's a challenge to want to write, or to make time to write, but I know it will be worth it to be able to look back.
Let's hope it doesn't take me another year to get back here to post again- there are approximately eighteen-thousand quinoa recipes I've tried that I need to tell you about.... :)
