As I celebrate the last few weeks of this year with family and friends, I can't help but look back at the past year in amazement. Life has been such a roller coaster of events, excitement, loneliness, adventure, joy, challenges, gratitude, love and much, much more- but most of all growth. Through it all the thought that my identity is found in something greater than myself has been my anchor. My prayer is that my need for control, order, and sense will never take away from the work God delights in doing in each and every one of us.

With that said, here is an excerpt by C.S. Lewis I recently came across:

"Your real, new self (which is Christ's and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, a man who bothers about originality will ever be original whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else will be thrown in." CSL