Some Self-Reflection and a Glance Forward

I am deeply flawed person.

It probably wouldn't take someone long to come up with a list of my more glaringly obvious faults and failings. My family will tell you that I have a quick temper and a moody disposition at times. I'm sure my friends would happily tell you about my tendency to ramble and monopolize conversation, and even my classmates who typically go an entire semester without really getting to know me at all, could probably give you an idea of my overbearing and pompous personality traits. Not even those closest to me, however, have ever had the chance to actually look into my head or heart and see my most painful and crippling flaws.

Yeah, there are a lot of things wrong with me.

I'm impatient, nosy, inconsiderate, insensitive, and pushy. I spend far too little time thinking about how my words and actions will impact others, and that's usually because I'm too busy trying to figure out how to satisfy my own selfish appetites. I disregard the concerns and feelings of others when I don't think they really make any sense, or when they appear frivolous to me. Too often I fall pray to those mood swings that are always looming over me, and "Oh poor me." far too frequently becomes the chant of my mind if not my lips.

The list of things that are wrong with me is so long I can't even comprehend it.

Trying to come up with a list of New Year's resolutions is an overwhelming task, and as I look back on the past year in an attempt to take tally of the things I would like to change about myself, I am nigh overwhelmed by the terrifying weight of all the mistakes I have made and the injuries I have caused. In fact, I put into mind of a particular song from a particular musical that I fell in love with just last year.

"What have I done?
Sweet Jesus, what have I done?
Become a thief in the night
Become a dog on the run
And have I fallen so far
And is the hour so late
That nothing remains but the cry of my hate?" 

The cry of a man finally forced to face all of the wrong he has committed in his life, and nearly driven mad by the crushing, and unrelenting force that is the truth.

We deserve to die.

Like Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, every last one of us will one way or another be forced to face the fact that we are despicable, fallen, and failing sinners who deserve naught but death. Like Jean Valjean, I look back at some of my words and actions from the last year, heck even the last month, and I can only ask "What have I done? Sweet Jesus what I done?"

However, like Jean Valjean, I am not left to my own devices and doomed to face the consequences of becoming a thief in the night and a dog on the run. Despite all that he has done, Valjean finds forgiveness in Christ and the church. Despite the fact that he is faced with many, many years of hatred and wrong doing lying in his past, he at last recognizes and receives a forgiveness for all the wrong that frees him from what he describes as the whirlpool of his sin, and moves forward to become not only a better man, but a good man. Jean Valjean becomes a man who ends up dedicating his life, and in the end sacrificing it, to care for and raise a young girl to whom he is not related and to whom he legally and realistically owes nothing.

Why?

Because in being freed from the chains of guilt that plagued him, he was freed to live beyond his own failings for the sake others. Not by his own worthiness and strength, but by the worthiness and strength of the one who bought and paid for his faults, was Jean Valjean able to become a new man, a good man.

As I look back across 2013 and forward to the rest of 2014, I can only thank God that I too have be given the opportunity to be a new man, a good man, and that despite the fact that I day after day add to the list of mistakes I have made, every day I am forgiven and in that forgiveness I made a new man again.

2013 was a big year for me in a lot of ways and on a lot of levels. I made a lot of ground in both work and school. I got a driver's license and "inherited" a car. I was blessed with the opportunity to take numerous trips to visit numerous friends, and got to spend close to two fulls weeks with my lovely sister and her family from across the country. A lot happened to me as a person as well though, and I feel like passing classes and getting jobs pale in comparison to some of the lessons I've learned since January 2013. At last I was able to lay to rest some old demons that had been haunting me for some time, and with that came the opening of news doors that will hopefully carry me on to many different, and significantly better places.

More than anything else, I feel much more content than I did this time a year ago. I spent quite a bit of time in early 2013 feeling very anxious, frustrated, and restless with myself, my situation in life, where I was headed, and how fast I was getting there. I actually kind of enjoyed it when school and work were all consuming because it mean I wasn't wasting my time worrying about other things. There were loose ends from 2012 I didn't know how to take care of, and I was afraid of what the rest of the year was going to bring. I wasn't entirely confident with the path I had chosen for a degree and education, but mostly that was because I didn't know where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do with it. I was, quite simply, restless. I was struggling to redefine my identity  and what I wanted out of life, and it was driving me up the wall.

I don't feel any of that now.

As I get ready to take on 2014 when it really hits me in full force on Monday with the return of work and school, I am looking forward to the next twelve months with an optimist and enthusiasm that was definitely lacking toward the end of my winter break last year. The kind internal anguish and confusion that plagues Jean Valjean in his soliloquy, and that ranged in my own mind at various times in the last few years isn't there anymore. I feel like I new man, made new by the New Man over the past months by my friends and family who have helped me to grow and change into a better person daily, despite all those painful and shameful errors ingrained within me I mentioned earlier.

A year ago I felt like I was missing a purpose or a path to follow, but this year I have wind in my sails and something driving me. True, true, I will hit a lot of bumps in the road and you will no doubt find me complaining and whining every now and then, because my flaws aren't ever going to completely go away, but that's part of life.

2013 was a big year for me. During the twelve months it encompassed I grew a lot.

God willing, 2014 is going to be another big year, and my resolution from here on out is to keep growing, and to use my faults and failings as a starting point.

The process has already begun, really it began a little over nineteen years ago when I was first born, but in recent months I've finally gotten comfortable with embracing that fact, the fact that life is always going to consist of growing, and dieing, and being born again as a new man in the New Man. I don't necessarily need a firm destination set in place every step of the way, I don't necessarily need to be guaranteed success, and I don't have to be perfect, not on my own.

I'll make a lot of mistakes this year, and I want to apologize in advanced to all the people I'm going to hurt, offend, and upset unfairly, because I know that I will do that quite often. 

I am deeply flawed person.

Until the last day, I will continue to be so, but everyday I am also a new man, bought and paid for by the body and blood of our Lord and washed white in the blood of the Lamb. I am a deeply flawed person, but that's OK, because in the end even Javert and the Law can't call me guilty when I've been declared forgiven.

Here I stand, I can do no other.

Happy New Year and a Blessed Epiphany to you all,
Pax

The Soliloquy of Jean Valjean