out with the old, in with the new

What a year!  While it's not good to be obsessed with the past, it's beneficial (and fun!) to look back to see what I've learned and also to recognize the abundance God has given me.  It's been a year of great opportunity, great fun, and great discovery and learning.  I have everything to be thankful for.  This year has been the best of my life--and perhaps the most important--thus far. I've been endowed with God's blessings.  I've failed in some respects, but the failures have brought much-needed learning.  And I know that along with the failures, I've also enjoyed accomplishments, all with God's help.  I look forward to this new year, to new experiences, to changing for the better in 2012!

Out with the old, in with the new.  Tennyson wrote so well:  

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light;

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more,

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;

Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out, ring out thy mournful rhymes,

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.