As I reflect back on the year, I find I still struggle with thinking that the everyday things I do, really matter. I often felt my job was not enough, it needed to be “something” bigger, something I wasn’t being paid to do. This year has helped me to realize that even if you “do small things with great love” (Mother Theresa) – they really do matter. I’ve always appreciated the co-workers I had who kept a smile on their face, a sense of humor, and served with love and compassion rather than spending 8 plus hours just “putting in time”. So as I again witnessed the variety of personalities while working through the home – I realized I truly am gift. As it was reflected upon during my last Spiritual Companioning Reunion: “you yourselves are a letter of recommendation, written on your hearts, to be known and read by all people; and you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts”. (2 Cor. 3:3) So once again I have been blessed with a year of mutual writings upon the human heart, sometimes I was the author, but often times, others were writing upon my own heart.

Let me not forget:
Christ has no body but ours,
No hands, no feet on earth but ours,
Ours are the eyes with which he looks with compassion on the world
Ours are the feet with which he walks to do good
Ours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.
Teresa of Avila

We are where God intends for us to be, as it is written in the book of Isaiah and again reflected upon once again in one of my recent Spiritual Companion reunion retreats, “Am I in the right place?, have I done the right things? Despite any mistakes, God’s providence means that wherever I have gotten to, whatever I have done, this is precisely the road to where heaven begins. However many clues I have missed, however many wrong turns I’ve taken, however unnecessarily I have complicated my journey, the road still beckons and the Lord still ‘waits to be gracious to me’”. (Simon Tugwell, Prayer: Living with God) God has gifted and directed me to this year to live in the Openness of the Spirit. I have grown in learning that the voice of my heart is truly the God within, that which when kept open, leads to a path God has set forth.

So as I end this year, I reflecting on the beauty of what I have experienced:
I’ve seen the beauty of the ocean, the beauty in nature’s destruction; I’ve seen the beauty in poverty through the eyes of hope and the beauty of the untrusting and often lonely soul of the rich; I have seen the beauty of the rising sun and the beauty of the setting sun; the disappointments in life and the beauty of new life; I’ve seen the beauty of giving and the beauty of receiving; the beauty of the spring and the beauty of the fall; the beauty of black, brown, and white; the beauty in aging and the beauty of dying; the beauty of endings and the beauty of new beginnings; the beauty of unexpected good-byes and the beauty of new friendships forged; the beauty of history made and the beauty of history that awaits to be made; I have seen the beauty of silence and the beauty of voices heard; all the beauty of God’s love, grace, and mercy that abound when the eyes and heart are wide open.