Here's To A Good Story in 2013

My mind is a funny thing. It likes to play tricks on me - it often tells me that I am stuck in a rut, that my life is meaningless and that I have no purpose. It compares my accomplishments to those around me and makes me feel guilty for not achieving more. During one of my emotional self-pity-parties I decided to take inventory on the things that I had accomplished in 2012. This was a very humbling and eye-opening exercise. I realized that the daily drudge of my life has shielded my view of the incredible blessings and opportunities that Brad and I have been given in the past 12 months. Once these blinders were removed, I began to take stock of what we are so lucky to have and be truly thankful. I have decided to share the list below, in hopes that it inspires you to carefully consider your own life and remember how blessed you are. 

In 2012 we....

1. Rang in the new year painting at my sister’s new house
2. I made the front page of the Madison Courier as one of Madison’s top 10 young people
3. Moved my sister in to her college house
4. Signed up for Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University
5. Visited some people that we love in South Carolina
6. Climbed in the ruins of an old castle
7. Spent St. Patrick’s Day in Northern Ireland
8. Got chased by some sheep in a field in Ireland
9. Brad officiated the wedding of his sister
10. Paid $1,000 in taxes
11. Completed Dave Ramsey's Step 1
12. Took my sister to her senior prom
13. Ordered a pallet of bottled water from Lowe’s 
14. Saw Over the Rhine with our friends at the folk festival
15. Moved in with my parents
16. Celebrated our second anniversary
17. Watched my sister graduate from High School
18. Went camping with my mater and Corey
19. Welcomed the 2012 Ulster Project teens to Madison as Presidents of the organization and Time of Discovery leaders
20. Slept in cardboard boxes for the second annual homeless simulation
21. Got on a bus and spent 9 hours in Chicago with a group of pretty cool people
22. Raised $15,000 at the Ulster Project dinner auction
23. Put on my wedding dress and dressed as a zombie bride for Halloween in July
24. Took a 3-hour tour on the Belle of Louisville
25. Did the Velisoraptor an embarrassing number of times in public
26. Said goodbye to a group of amazing teens and two of the best people I know
27. Started a weekly tradition of Thursday night dinners at the Burdettes
28. Watched a meteor shower from the camper
29. Paid off our Visa and 2 store credit cards and started chipping away at our "dumb debt"
30. Launched a new website for the Chamber & Economic Development
31. Went to see Mumford & Sons for Brad’s birthday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
32. Got an awesome new hair cut & color from my sister-in-law
33. Took our niece to Chuck-E-Cheese’s
34. Went to the Casino in Anderson and won some monies!
35. Ate aussie burgers and solved the world's problems around a campfire with our new Australian friends
36. Started a Couch to 5K running program
37. Won free tickets to NASCA & went to a NASCAR race for the first time ever
38. Visited friends for our yearly ritual at the Evansville Fall Festival (including donut burgers!!)
39. Made 15 gallons of white bean chili and bought 80 pounds of apples for Soup, Stew, Chili & Brew
40. Put on a very successful Soup, Stew, Chili & Brew festival
41. Voted early for the 2012 Presidential election
42. Dressed up as Silent Film stars for a Halloween party
43. Packed our bags and headed to Ireland again, this time for a leadership conference
44. Flew out of New York City a day before Hurricane Sandy blew in
45. Joined the Ulster Project International steering committee
46. Spent Halloween with a group of diverse people who have found enough in common to love each other
47. Had tea with the Lord Mayor of Belfast, a former Ulster Project teen
48. Toured Stormont and met with different sides of the local government in Belfast
49. Visited the peace walls and wrote our own messages of peace, hope, and reconciliation
50. Spent a day at YouthLink, an inter-church organization that provides support and training for youth workers and community relations experiences for young people, on the very day that prison officer David Black was shot by dissident republicans on the M1 on his way to work, a mere 15 miles from where we were
51. Toured the Titanic Belfast Museum, the Titanic Quarter and got a private tour of the studio where they film Game of Thrones
52. Had lunch at the Dock Café, an Honesty Box Café  in which there is no charge for the food but you can make a donation for what you think it’s worth
53. Had dinner with Rev. Kerry Waterstone, who founded the Ulster Project in 1975
54. Went on a scary/sexy tour of the Leprechaun museum in Dublin
55. Watched Skyfall in Ireland before it was released in the US
56. Came  back to America just in time to watch the results of the election
57. Received a $2,000 grant from the Community Foundation to implement our Leadership Development Program in the 2013 Madison Ulster Project
58. Celebrated Thanksgiving with our families
59. Sang drunken karaoke at Beatniks with some old buddies
60. Decorated our new space for Christmas
61. Made a giant world out of pvc pipes, a tarp and spray paint
62. Dressed as post cards and walked in the Very Merry Madison Christmas parade
63. Discovered that someone broke into our storage unit but took nothing
64. Two beautiful little girls came into our lives and we have spent many days watching Dora and playing with blocks and baby dolls
65. Started cooking in the crock pot
66. Watched as our nation picked up the pieces of broken hearts in the wake of a tragedy in Connecticut when a gunman entered an elementary school and killed 26 people including teachers, young students and himself
67. Drove up to Brad's parents' house while they were on vacation to paint and redecorate our niece's room as a Christmas surprise
68. Hung out with my dad as he recovered from his second hip replacement surgery
69. Celebrated my 26th birthday with awesome coworkers then dinner and craft-night with the Burdettes
70. Hot glued over 4 bags of Christmas bows to a party dress and a Goodwill sweater for an ugly Christmas sweater party
71. Brad cooked the traditional family Christmas Eve dinner with an amazing riesling and mustard glazed ham
72. Celebrated Christmas traditions - both new and old - with our families
73. Enjoyed a snow day the day after Christmas
74. Built a snowman with my mom outside my sister's window
75. Ended 2012 with some Modern Family, Scrabble, and Goldschlager and started 2013 with a midnight kiss (followed by a Skype call to our friends in Northern Ireland)

All in all, I would say that all of those things add up to a pretty incredible year. I am looking forward to 2013 where my main goals are to save more money than I spend, burn more calories than I consume, do more for others than I do for myself, and practice resurrection by making ugly things beautiful and bringing dead things back to life. I want to count my blessings each day and not fall victim to the tricks of my mind. I will end with my favorite quote from Donald Miller: “And so my prayer is that your story will have involved some leaving and some coming home, some summer and some winter, some roses blooming out like children in a play. My hope is your story will be about changing, about getting something beautiful born inside of you about learning to love a woman or a man, about learning to love a child, about moving yourself around water, around mountains, around friends, about learning to love others more than we love ourselves, about learning oneness as a way of understanding God. We get one story, you and I, and one story alone. God has established the elements, the setting and the climax and the resolution. It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn't it?" 

So here's to 2013 - may you and I continue to live a good story, one that is worth retelling, one that we can be proud of when we look back on it in a year's time. 

Peace & Blessings