If I had been asked to guess what I thought that God would do with my resolution, I would probably have listed off all of the desires of my heart in the confident hope that this being my best year yet would lead to their fulfillment.
Here we are, three months into the Best Year Yet and what has God decided to do with my resolution so far? Let's recap:
Early in January I was in a car accident. It was both my first accident and my first ticket. All-in-all the best case scenario for that accident. I was on my way out of town and approaching a light that had turned green. I guess I spaced out after that because the traffic didn't really start moving by the time I reached the intersection and I rear-ended a truck. The truck was fine, but my poor corolla was no longer in a condition to drive out of town. So after a tow truck, I spent three weeks without my car driving a van that I borrowed from some dear friends of mine who have generous hearts.
The first weekend of March I spent babysitting in Iowa, an experience, which in and of itself deserves a post about all the giggles and funny things my nephews said and did. On my way back to Peoria, the weather was not that great. It had snowed earlier and the roads were a deceptive and treacherous kind of slick. There were cars in the ditch just about every twenty miles the whole way back. At one point I took a side-road around a traffic jam, I didn't feel comfortable on the main road with so many semis closing in on me. On this windy back road, (ever since my first accident) I was driving like a grandma. Coming around a curve (at night) there were 6 doe deer standing in the road. I of course braked, but after realizing there was no avoiding this collision, I knew that the safest thing for me to do would be to drive into them.
Praise the Lord that I only hit one of the deer. Her body slammed into the driver's side of my car and the rest of the deer scattered. Considering the gravity of that situation, I am extremely lucky to be alive right now. Since my car was still drive-able, it was a long hour and a half to a well-lit trusted rest-stop where I could survey the damage and have a mini-break down. I did make it all the way back to my apartment after the experience, but was terribly shaken up for two days following the accident.
Poverty. Again and again, God has been showing me how to rely on the goodness of the people around me. I'm still reflecting on the idea of poverty and what it means to come before the Lord empty and trusting. I'll have another reflection on poverty soon, I'm sure, but wanted to present the idea that poverty can be a gift from God. I'd welcome any thoughts to help me in this discovery. St. Joseph is probably one of the best models of the gift of poverty (next to the Blessed Mother) and I've been asking him to show me how to take this lesson into the Best Year Yet.