[null, {"document_url": "http://winsomewoman.blogspot.com/2012/01/happy-new-year.html", "unformatted_src": "http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-j47Qwtk8Fa8/TwEOBOJFD3I/AAAAAAAAAaQ/VeqEslbe7fY/s400/photo-189.jpg", "src": "http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-j47Qwtk8Fa8/TwEOBOJFD3I/AAAAAAAAAaQ/VeqEslbe7fY/s400/photo-189.jpg", "formatted_filename": "photo", "rendered_width": 400, "rendered_height": 298}, null, {"document_url": "http://winsomewoman.blogspot.com/2012/01/happy-new-year.html", "unformatted_src": "http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RjeI3e-pXlc/TwELCZNymVI/AAAAAAAAAaE/GPyHRhNg3Cs/s400/photo-187.jpg", "src": "http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RjeI3e-pXlc/TwELCZNymVI/AAAAAAAAAaE/GPyHRhNg3Cs/s400/photo-187.jpg", "formatted_filename": "photo", "rendered_width": 400, "rendered_height": 298}]

It's a unique reflection. A whole year at a time. Not the way we usually look back.

Or forward, which I find particularly foreboding. Reflecting on 2011, I imagine myself one year ago today. Had I known all that was to come, good and bad, I think like Scrooge when faced with Marley's declaration of the three spirits' imminent visits, I would have replied, "I think I'd rather not."

But thankfully, I didn't know. Like all my other years, I lived it one day at a time.

That's a good thing.

Our years are full of joys and sorrows, expected and the un. It would be a burden too great to bear to know ahead all that was to come.

So as I reflect, I enjoy the clarity of hindsight. How it reveals in truth what before was only known by faith.

And I remind myself I will sit here again one year from now making some sense of all that has passed in 2012.

I look back with gratitude and forward with hope.

And begin a New Year.

One thank-full and faith-full day at a time.