Welcome to 2017!  I declare this year to be a new beginning and I’m looking forward to good news, good times, and good friends in 2017.

For many years, I’ve struggled with various chronic illnesses.  There were many and most of them were long lived.  The last several years that I’ve been blogging about chronic illness, I’ve talked about how a person’s spirits can be weakened and their faith can be tested.

I thought I’d start off the year with a recap of where I started.  You can read more about my journey here, but I’m going to post my first video here as well to show you where I started when I began this blog in 2014.

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The last two years have been a different kind of health journey for me.  I’ll talk more about them in my vlog (video blog) post later in the month, but suffice it to say I’ve had more stuff taken out of me the past two years that I’m surprised I still have my appendix and my tonsils. LOL 

The last few years have also been a struggle for my family financially since my husband lost his job.  He’s still searching for a permanent job two years later, but we have renewed hope this year with a company near our home.

Another area of difficulty for us the past few years has been adjusting to Indiana.  When we first moved here, we lived in NW Indiana where we were introduced to all manner of natural disasters.  Our house was hit by lightning that fried 36 electronic items in our home and caused a house fire.  We had tornado warnings, one of which managed to trap us inside a Walmart for a time.  We had a flash flood masquerading as a puddle with evil intentions that took the life of our beloved car.   

In all honesty, I’d probably not choose to go through all those things again.  But I’m happy to say that they did prepare me for my ministry and my next project for 2017.  It also strengthened my faith as I was able to see how all things happen for a reason.  It was amazing to me how God took things like tragedy, cancer, and other not so good stuff and hid, inside it, a blessing.  I’ll talk more about that in my video.

But this brings me to the new beginning I mentioned in the title of this post.  I’m in the process of writing a book that I’d like to get traditionally published about my journey the past few years.  I strongly believe it will inspire those who feel discouraged, weary and stuck in whatever struggle the Lord has allowed you to go through–especially if it has been long and many in number.  There can be meaning in the struggle for you if you look for it hard enough.  I’d like to show you how.  I’d like to show you how I found blessings in the pain, meaning in the chaos, and purpose in the strength it takes to go on when STUFF happens.

So that is my goal this year and I’ll be sharing a bit of that each month in 2017.  So you, my readers, will get first look at some of the lessons I learned and strength I found in the midst of the mess that was my life.  Stay tuned and buckle up. It’s going to be an amazing ride!