Life Jubilee

A new year is creeping up on us. Again.

As always, I have been examining my life. In 2007, my life felt something like this

via Sim U

Then I just had to go and get married to the wrong-est man in the world. In less than a year, this is what my whole existence felt like

God's going to trouble the waters...

Because I have friends who love me and a family who will collect all their noses to put them in my business if they think I am in distress, I was pulled back on track. I got home to Alaska and right onto a great job that I loved. Ironically, things fell apart for me on the Fourth of July - a national and, for me, a personal celebration. Just when I was getting my shit together, this freak show called neurosarcoidosis decided to come and visit me.

Damnit.

But I try to look for my blessings in everything. Guess what? I wasn't in my right mind when I married a man who pulled a Jekyll and Hyde act. Yes! It wasn't really me who stayed with someone who treated me so badly. It was a woman with a strange stuff happening inside. My brain was just having its own problems.

Or your brain cells doing weird things...

And I have a million stories to tell, most of them kind of funny. (But not the one about walking nine blocks in 100-degree heat for groceries because Mr. Tingles left with the car and stayed gone for over a week.)

Anyway. My brain digresses...

This post is about healing and progression. In shedding the weight of the past, I have decided to no longer make resolutions for a new year, but kind of go bit by bit with my self-improvements. It's the same idea an aunt of mine has about Thanksgiving. She will remind well-wishers that every day is "Thanksgiving." While, she has felt that way since youth, I have just now taken up the same belief about renewal.

I've decided to fall back on what the Bible teaches about cycles. I'm not sure if I have it right, but 2014 is the year for things being better.

In the Bible, the number seven is significant. I'm no scholar, but I remember enough from reading the Bible (and from the sermons I sat through as a child) to know about this "perfect" number.

What I didn't remember in detail, I could easily find around the internet. This one really goes into some detail. Too bad I have the attention span of a gnat.

I found other explanations for the perfection of seven as a number. Some were too scientific for my sarc-soaked brain to love. The vision of numbers in parentheses makes me go blind.

Nooo!!!! I can't look, I can't look!

God being so good as math is enough to make Him my hero. Me being so bad at math, yet fairly intelligent, makes me the opposite of Rain Man.

Kidding aside, this was the best for me. It's a simple repeat of everything I learned in my Pentecostal home as a youth. The seven year/day renewal idea is a simple one that I can intellectually grasp and it fits in with my faith. (Note that it doesn't affect my faith.)

My simple mind can deal with this. It's something I can incorporate into my own life system. I can handle fasting once every seven days, doing something charitable, cutting my hair, trimming my Google Plus circles. Every seven weeks, I can check my oil, call my great-auntie in Arkansas, change my online passwords and delete useless apps from my phone, hint to the fam about the things still on my Google Wishlist.

~Hmmm~

2007 was when things got twisted. 2014 might be at least the beginning of things going better. I'm hoping to get that book written, this heart of mine softened back up, this hair of mine under control, this disease tackled for good... I'm not looking for miracles, just a little joy.

Now that I'm thinking about it, this could be a really good thing. It's a simple thing to hope for. Seven years of struggle, seven years of peace. Please, God.

It's my life, somebody's got to live it.

Peace
--Free