A New Year, another new "new"

I don't mean to have a pity party or anything but as I reflect on the last 15 or so years of my life, I can remember telling myself an awful lot that I was going to have to get used to the new "new" that my life had become.  And I used to hate change.  I guess this is God's way of helping me get used to, and learn to embrace change.  In the last 15 years I graduated from college, got a full time job at Guidant, got married, became a manager at Guidant, moved to a new department at Guidant, got pregnant, had a baby, my father-in-law died suddenly of a heart attack, got pregnant again, dropped down from a 40 hour work week to 32 hours a week, had my third baby when my oldest was three and a half, survived many lay-offs at and the purchase of Guidant by Boston Scientific, had my youngest go temporarily blind from fast-growing cataracts that developed at the age of 2, nursed him through 2 major eye surgeries, lost my first ever fur-baby with Stu to old age, adopted an adult dog, suffered from debilitating anxiety and panic attacks and took temporary leave from work to go through outpatient treatment, began fostering dogs, started my own non-profit 501c3 animal rescue, fostered many dogs and some kittens, had some wonderful and some awful experiences while running Diamonds in the Ruff, adopted another adult dog,  found out my mom had Mesothelioma (lung cancer), decided to shut down my animal rescue,  sold my first home with Stu and bought another one, volunteered with another rescue, had to make the gut-wrenching decision to put one of my own dogs down after several biting and near-biting incidents, was asked to leave the rescue I'd worked so hard for and donated a lot of money to, adopted a puppy, cared for my mom in the last weeks of her life, adopted my mom's cat after she passed away, adopted another adult dog, and now I will start 2016 as a daughter with no mother.  I can honestly say that I'm finally getting used to dealing with change and I don't find it nearly as upsetting anymore.  Losing my mom is definitely the hardest new "new" that I've had to deal with but I continue to have faith that God has a plan for my life and even the saddest, most upsetting times are part of that plan.

In this new year, I want to try again to read more than I have in the past few years, print out many (many!!!!) digital photos since I've only printed a handful here and there for the past 6 or so years, and as a family we are going to fill a gratitude jar with little blessings we make note of each week.  On New Year's Eve, we'll empty the jar and remind ourselves of all the good God worked in our lives in 2016.  If we focus on the bad things, the world can start looking pretty grim.  This is one way our family plans to focus on the positive!

Our gratitude jar is already filling up!  We all struggle with stuff in this family but are very blessed as well.