2009--different year

this final year of the decade was a different year. it started out with the loss of one of the most special people in my life--my grandma. i still cannot express in words my feelings of her loss here on earth, but i do know that her suffering in her sickness was for God's glory and that i need to learn a lot of the Christian virtues she had. one of them forgiveness....i believe this virtue was tested all throughout 2009...relationships with friends and family were examined and in many ways i felt wronged or neglected in someway. these feelings even led me to question my own relationship with God and i found myself in a place where i started to deny the love of God in my own life. i learned a valuable lesson though...the more i examined myself and my actions, i am not a perfect person, far from it. the verse 'love covers a multitude of sins' has been my theme for the ending part of 2009. as I am not a perfect person, God covers me and my sins out of His undying love for me. this example i must do with others. a way to deal with this is to just not focus so much on the error someone did to me, but rather focus on how much God has mercy on me and that i should do the same for others. i hear a lot of the arabic expressions of 'fawitty' or '3adeeha'...and while in my hurt sometimes it's very hard, i learned it is the only way to overcome the hurt.

i can sit all day and discuss the virtues my grandma had, but this one tops it all...so as 2010 is a mere 4 days away, i can say that my year of struggle has yielded positive hopes for the coming year.