Welcome back to the blog. 2009 did not end at all as I expected. My absence from writing is due to my wife having an accident in late October. She stepped out of a tall van onto an uneven street while working. She fractured her left ankle. She totally shattered her right ankle and foot. She spent two weeks with her leg up prior to the operation to repair the right ankle. It was one of those procedures requiring screws and pins. There were casts, boots and lots of ankle wrapping to do since then. My autistic son was not quite sure at first what to make of all of this. His sister did a wonderful job filling in for me during my travels back and forth to the hospital. It threw all of us for a loop. I'd say it threw us for a serious body slam even more than a loop. The point of all of this is to say that my routine took a serious hit the last two months. We are not totally sure we are out of the woods yet.

It is possible there may be more procedures yet to come. There surely are more doctor visits for us before this is over. At least now we are at a place where we can get out and do a few things rather than struggle to our appointments and back home. She even graduated from needing a wheelchair to get around. She sure was hard to find in Wal Mart when her sight level was lower than the shelves. It can be said that my experience now includes lots of wrapping and taping of the ankle. We will leave some of the more delicate details out but just let it be said there were more than a few things that I never thought I would learn in life.

Life is a learning experience from the start. The goal is to never stop learning. Sometimes we learn the hard way. We encounter various types of trouble that nudges us to a deeper relationship with God. The crisis serves to reveal where we are in life and then offers us the chance to grow beyond previous boundaries. Learning sometimes occurs in the everyday ebb and flow of life. You can learn things from people simply by listening. Perhaps this is why Proverbs says that listening is far more valuable than talking a lot. You can learn by listening to God beyond what happens to you. Too many people stop learning when times go bad. You cannot really develop a mature life by only engaging God in the good times.

We started last year with a goal to write here everyday. Things didn't go too bad until past mid year. So let's start this 2010 without the goal of daily blogging. A better target may be for me to write at least a few times per week. Maybe there will be weeks of lots of material. There will also be times when the creative well dries up. It happens on occasion to the best of us. So there is no doubt that it will happen to me. My hope is your 2010 will be free from accidents or crises. May we enter as well as leave this year together and better than when we found it.

Bro. Trey