2011

was such a wack year.

I stumbled across a fat, red notebook with smooth, gridded sheets. I had journaled in this notebook every now and then for about half a year, but then left it generously blank in my bedroom in Florida - stuffed in the back of a closet, behind piles of sweaters and coats and a poofy down comforter that had pulled me through winters in Pittsburgh - before hastily leaving for a job and a boyfriend in California.

Reading through this notebook was, well, interesting. It's filled with personal prayers tightly interwoven with verses and quotes and notes from the Book of Jeremiah, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and John Piper sermons. That was my life last year -- searching, searching, searching. For a job, for direction in dating, for answers to so many questions.

On the last page in this notebook containing handwriting, I had scribbled in huge letters: "ALTHOUGH OUR SINS TESTIFY AGAINST US, O LORD, DO SOMETHING FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR NAME. I NEED A MIRACLE".

I can't remember what exactly prompted me to write this. Maybe I had read that line in Jeremiah at the culmination of so many worries and it stirred up a storm in my desperate heart. But a year and some change later, I can testify that God has indeed answered this prayer. Over and over again.

2012, bring it.