Out with the old...

...in with the new. So, it's the last day of 2015. What a year it's been.
     It's so cliche to do a "year in review" article/post/video/etc. News sites and blogs and Youtube have been full of the things. "Top 10" articles abound this time of year along with the video montages of highlights and stupidity. Yeah, it's good to reminise and recall the good times. But we also remember the all garbage spewed by society in the last 365 days.
I'll just throw this out there. Can we, please, forget about microaggressions, safe spaces and trans-whatevers? The world has enough victims without new versions being made up. When did America become the land of the caged and home of the wimp? OK, getting off the soapbox now. 
      Anyways, here it is. My "year in review." I'm going to try and focus on the positives without ranting about all the problems. Accomplishments over disappointments. This isn't a sad story. No need to dwell on the negatives.
     If I'd been a little more prescient, I'd have started this a week ago. But instead, here is is at about four hours to midnight and I'm furiously typing out my thoughts. Oh well. I work better under pressure. Douglas Adams liked the sound that deadlines make as they rush on by. I'm not so inclined. Deadlines are, however, a great motivator. So here are three things that stand out to me about the past year and the things it brought.
     First, it's been a year of changes. Yeah, real obvious Brian. But I'm serious. How much change can you cram into 365 days? It turns out, quite a lot. Some of it good, some bad. For the first time in years, I finally feel like I'm where I should be. On the other hand, my friends would argue that not seeing me for so long is a bad thing. We all make sacrifices. Even the people at home. I could go on for hours about everything that has changed. The list, though, would be too long to finish before midnight so I'll limit it to a few things. Here are the highlights:

1. Quitting my job as an airplane mechanic to be a missionary for a year
2. Moving away from the country I was born in to live on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean
3. Serious language learning and not just for fun
4. I learned to cook for real and not just reheat frozen meals
5. Learning to teach
6. Gaining new confidence

     If you've been following along since the beginning, you could probably think of a dozen other things to add to the list. I've written about it constantly. I also haven't written this much as an assignment since I got out of college. I'm probably writing more now than I did then. Ha, bonus thing for the list of changes.
     Second, 2015 saw the beginning of a new stage of my life. I said way, way back in one of the early posts that "Change is growth and constancy is stagnation." I still believe it. Post-college, I thought my life had finally started. I was going to get a good job, get married and settle down. Yeah, not so much. It turns out, I was merely in a holding pattern for six years until the real next stage of my life could begin.
     In those six years, I can say I did grow somewhat. I learned some new confidence and skills. However, as a person, I can't say I grew a lot. But in the last six months, I've grown more than I can say. Not in weight. The opposite actually. This actually plays off the first point of change a little. Things have been changing and, thus, I've been growing. Yeah, I've still got some confidence issues. I think that'll be with me for the rest of my life. But I feel like I've grown up somewhat.
     I can't attribute it to anything I've done personally. I do, however, attribute it to the situations God has put me in. He's been stretching, prodding, and shaping me over the past year into a new shape that isn't much like what I thought I'd be.
     Third, this year saw me take a step out in faith and do what I've been called to. Calling. It's a word that people talk about but not a whole lot goes into describing it. You can be called by your parents to come down for dinner. Or you can be called by God to go be a missionary. In one case you hear a literal voice doing the calling. The other isn't always a voice. In my case, it was an itch, a need, an interest, and a desire all wrapped up into one ball of urging to go. I didn't hear a voice from Heaven. I didn't see words written in the frost on a window. I didn't see the Virgin Mary on a piece of toast. What I felt was an urge to go.
     I'm a firm believer in the idea that God influences what you do in your life by the interests He instills in your heart. While I was growing up, that interest was aviation. The thing I spent hours and hours thinking about and studying led me to a college degree and job in aviation. A year and a half ago, that interest became Ukraine. A simple visit from a Ukrainian pastor awoke something I thought I'd lost a long time prior. It was an interest that had merely been in hibernation since 2003. That interest led me to a short-term missions trip which drove that interest deeper and morphed it into an urge and a desire. On the trip, I saw a new place I could be effective and useful. Not that I wasn't in my previous job. But that interest opened a new world of options to me for my life; options that I had, to one extent or another, ignored or dismissed. I wasn't exactly being a 21st century Jonah. It was close though. Fortunately I didn't need to be tossed over the railing of a ship or swallowed by a huge fish. I'm not dense, just slow.
     Those are just a few thoughts I had as I close out the year. I'm not going to make any resolutions for the new year. Why start on the 1st what you can do today? I will however say that I'm looking forward to where the rest of this adventure takes me. God willin' and the creek don't rise, I'll be here another eight months. All the things I've seen, all the things that have changed, and all the ways I've grown are only a taste of what is to come. There's a lot of living to do in eight months. Let's see what it brings.