This time last year, I was different. The basics, of course, were the same. I loved Jesus. I wore my ponytails on the side (long live the side-pony). I had the same job as I do now. I was of course still in a relationship with Craig (though it was about to become marriage!).
It's amazing how a year flies by, but as soon as you try to put your mind back where it was 365 days ago, you realize it wasn't as "just yesterday" as you thought. Even just now, trying to think of small things that were surely the same, I realized they, too, had changed. In my previous paragraph, I started to write, "My friends were the same." But that's not entirely true. I started to write "I watched Disney Channel." But even that has changed. (They are one-by-one canceling the shows I like, ok? Plus now we are now HGTV watchers.) It was even hard to come up with much to write in my previous paragraph.
Our 1-year anniversary coming up this weekend (yay) has made me think a lot these past couple days about "this time last year." I don't do this regularly, but I should. Without the milestone, I probably wouldn't have stopped to reflect on what God has done in my life.
This time last year, I was praying for completely different things than I am praying for now.
The things I was struggling with a year ago have almost all passed by, and God has been faithful through it all. It's comforting to know that this time next year, I may be saying the same thing. Gives the phrase "this too shall pass" a new resonance.
It's good for me to go look back at my prayers from this time last year (I get too distracted to pray without writing it down) and see how God has been faithful. Otherwise I just keep plugging along, one foot in front of the other, and never stop to wonder at God's goodness. I actually hadn't done at all recently that until I started thinking about what to write today.
Where were you this time last year? Have you seen God's faithfulness through the struggles you were facing then? What has changed?