{new} years that ask and answer

This year.

This year has stretched and challenged me. 

This long hard year has grown me and it has shattered me. 

I am broken and I am better. I am braver and lonelier. I am face down in prayer and I am stretched high in worship. I am questioning and yet I am answered. 

The year ahead is looming now, full of unanswered questions and frightening realities. It is pressing in with whys and hows and wheres and whens. 

And yet, in the quietest moments, there is peace.

In the tiniest answers, there is hope.

In the hardest questions, the deepest pain,the most frightening moments of desperate longing and aching and fear, I am answered by the still small voice of the One who knows my pain. 

In His presence I am healed. In His Spirit I am comforted, encouraged, renewed. 

In the year ahead I will continue to break. And I will continue to heal. I will continue to seek and someday, somehow I will find. This year will answer, or the one after that. And little by little the questions will fade, and little by little new ones will arise to take their place. 

Year by year by year, questions and answers unending.

"But I will hope continually, and will praise You yet more and more."

Psalm 71:14

Here's to a new year. May its questions and answers draw you ever closer to hope.

Images via: {soliloquy}, pinterest