It might be 2017, but 2016 deserves one final post. While it wasn’t the best year by any means, at least for me it was a rather significant year. From finishing full time schooling, to moving, getting a new job, new friends, new apartment, and many other things it was an eventful year. While not everything is good or noteworthy I think it’s important to highlight some of the bigger things that have stood out to me this past year.

It’s hard to start anywhere other than new city, new job, new apartment right at the beginning of the year. Moving to a town where you only know a handful of people can be intimidating. Luckily for me I was able to meet hundreds of new people in this past year. A handful of which I’m able to now call friends. From stranger to essentially doing life together, it’s interesting how quickly life can change.

I’m especially thankful for some of those friends through this past year as they helped me to get through some rather trying times. From my grandma passing away, to health issues with some of my friends and family, to just trying to cope with life at times, this year definitely had some struggles. Sometimes there aren’t words to express what it means to just have someone be there even if they’re imperfect and don’t say the right things. Which a lot of this year has been messy and a lot of things haven’t gone anywhere near where I might have gone if I was in control. Which one of the big lessons from this past year is just how little control I really have.

Yet at the same time a lot of things that I’ve learned in this past year have come from seeing and reading and watching the world around me and those in it. I’ve come to realize how much being a part of a community is really important and how we’re not designed to be alone. While I don’t always need to like everyone around me, I know that some of the biggest problems facing this nation and this world are how alone some people feel. Which is where heading into next year I really hope that I can be a voice that people can relate to and reach out and have conversations and know that they’re not alone.

While there are many goals that can be set for this new year, especially ways that I can improve from this past year, but for me I don’t plan to set many new years resolutions. Which isn’t to say I don’t have goals, or that I don’t encourage people to have them, but for me one of the big things I’m working on is simplifying. It’s easy to get caught up in doing 100 different things and never really being present. Which is why a large focus for this next year is to just understand who I am and to work on finding out about those around me and the God who made it all possible. So I hope that as this new year unfolds that you would join me, and come alongside as I hope that in this next year people won’t feel alone. But rather seek the call to be a part of something new where they can be just who they were created to be and uncover what that means within a like-minded community.