Happy New Year to all you streamers!!! Wow, can you believe it? I get to celebrate the New Year with y'all AND celebrate my one year anniversary here in Blogstream. I tell ya it's been one whole year of mind boggling change for me. Last year I started blogging because I was lonely and heartbroken. I'd made some mistakes concerning love, career, and finances that were pretty bad. I dare say the type of mistakes that some people never recover from. It you want the gory details you can check out my first post.

However, as I sat down in front of the computer a year ago I was determined that I was going to find a way out of the mess that I'd created. How? Didn't have a clue but being the eternal optimist I figured where there was a will there was a way. The first thing I did was to try to identify what I'd screwed up, how much I'd lost and what I needed to do in the short term to fix it but trust me looking at my mess wasn't a happy task!!! Honestly, when I looked at the whole thing objectively I wanted to step out in front of a moving bus. I was feeling dum, stupid and like a waste of life.

The first thing that I set out to do was to get a job. Geez, I had no idea what I was in for. I did land one but it was pretty unstable and didn't allow me any type of autonomty. To the contrary, I had to live with my ex-husband and apply for public assistance. The fall from Grace was quite painful. However, it turns out that there were some lessons for me to learn, so stay in that place I was destined to do until God moved me along.

During all of this restoration I had two heartbreaks to deal with. The first was as I separated from the father of my youngest child. The relationship had been wrong for me from the beginning and ended up with physical abuse. Yet, with all of that I still had a hard time leaving him. The choice ultimately came down between him and my children and there was no way that he could have won. The cubs are my life, the air that I breathe and to leave them would literally have meant death to me. The second heartbreak came when I entered into a relationship with another. The problem being that I was still entwined with the first relationship. Thus, I ended up breaking the heart of one of the most wonderful guys in the world.

As I said in one of my other posts, both feet had bullets in them and I was holding the gun!!!

The lessons learned?...lots both big and small. The first, in terms of importance, but interestingly the one that I only recently ended up learning was that I could do nothing without God. I'd come up with this whole grand scheme of restoration but didn't have God in my life. I tried and tried and tried but nothing happened until I figured this out.

The second lesson that I learned was to learn to forgive myself for all of the things that I'd done. From that point I was able to start loving myself and see myself as a winner not a loser.

The final big lesson was to learn how to plan...dream...implement.

So dear Streamers, on my one year anniversary you find me in the middle of my journey; my focus on God as I continue walking my path. It's been a HELL of a year and one that strangely enough I now understand its' necessity. I had to grow spiritually and emotionally to even have a chance of getting back on track. If God had given it all back to me without the lessons (all of those oh so painful lessons) I would have just wasted it again. I've learned that all people and things that come into our lives are gifts from God and it is our responsibility to treat them with care...ourselves included.

So on this New Year's Eve eve I pray that all of you are blessed in 2007. I'm so looking forward to it!!! It's so my year, it's not funny. It's been 10 years of instability for me and now it's my turn to get it all back. Check back with me from time to time cause all types of miracles are going to be happening!!!

Love to you all, ME