I'm holed up in my room not too concerned about the parties that will be in full swing shortly,
quite a change for someone who had a hard time staying still in an MRI machine.
My mind travels to snippets of the journey that preceded this moment.
Forays through the scenes of a life lived before this year: entire mountains made of coloured pebbles, endless salt plains and the flamingoes that lived there, piranha-infested Amazonian tributaries, rainforests brimming with strange and wonderful creatures, and the edge of a continent where the desert plummeted into the ocean.
"Did you find what you were looking for?" Mom asked when I got home from that trip.
I must have made up an answer to cover the effort such a trip entailed, because I knew I hadn't.
A year ago this day I was on Cockatoo island watching fireworks shoot off the Harbour Bridge in Sydney, trying to placate a tinge of emptiness that insisted on prevailing despite of all the beauty I had experienced and people I'd met.
This year's activities for NYE are slightly less glamourous, blogging in front of my computer, yet enjoyed with infinitely more peace,
for somehow along the way, my journey led me to the turbulent sands of Australia, where while freezing in a brick and zinc shed at the back of someone's garden, I lay sprawled out on a pink yoga mat snuggled as close to a heating lamp as was safe, and in a lingering depression read the words of an ancient book that I didn't always understand but was convince held the keys to what I needed.
Not that I'd never read that book before, but that night while feeding on printed words, I felt a peaceful presence settle over the shed, listening to every word and cry over matters that probably weren't even true, yet comforting and loving me all the same.
Whatever happened that night, I can't put into words, all I know is that where there used to be incessant clamour in my mind, there is now peace and silence.
The clique I kept hearing and had been most cynical about must have been true -
Peace and love are a person, and His name is Yahweh.
And after you've met Him, you're never quite the same again.
Here's to the best year ever.
