And what a difference a year makes.

I've thought a bit about what I wanted to write about in commemoration of my 29th birthday.

But, I don't know... How do you summarize the experience of 29 years into a succinct, relatively readable online mashing of thoughts?

I guess the truth is that I don't remember much about what I've learned over the past 29 years. I don't remember much about what I've learned during the last 5.

I think that what you learn in life begins to diffuse down into your soul, so that the lessons there aren't something you can easily separate out into their own separate entities; they've meshed and mingled together, forming new insights, new layers of meaning, making up who we've become.

I'm an accumulation of experiences from the time I was a slightly annoyed, reddish-haired, 5lb 12oz baby (many thanks to Mom for particulars) to now, where I sit with toes tucked into the creases at the back of my knees, hair unbrushed, glasses slightly smudged, eyes dark with too much reading in too little light, fingers poised over my keyboard, wondering what to type next.

And what does that make me?

What person am I now because of what I've experienced, what I've done?

I'm not sure. I'm asking myself those things even as I type them here.

I wonder, often, if I'm the kind of person God wants me to be right now, if His forming of me has taken hold, if His moulding hasn't melted by my indignant straining against Him. I can feel that in some ways, I'm very much the person I need to be right now. And in other ways I fall far short of the mark. If sculptures could shift their shoulders to throw off the Master's blow, would they? Just to prove they were the ones forming themselves?

I don't even know what I'm saying.

I sat down to type a bit about the changes that I've had in my life this past year, changes which have not been insignificant, mind you. I've moved to Boston from Utah (a loooong ways, lemme tell you), I've lost oh-so-close-and-yet-not-close-enough to 100lbs, I've had crushes and new friendships and I've stared at the ceiling and the mountains and the stars, wondering how I can possibly fit, how I can possibly matter, and then realized half-wonderingly that I do after all.

I don't know.

That this year has been eventful, I am sure. That I've learned things, I'm certain. That I'm still as much of a pretentious fool as ever, I am convinced. But what it all means? Ah. Now that is the thing that leaves me flummoxed.

I think that, in the end, when our separate experiences distill themselves before God when we account for our life, that we'll see how each bit of our life here shaped us into the being we have become. As a being-in-process, I don't know how I'll end up. But I have faith in the hand that holds the chisel. And I'll try not to wiggle too much while He's working.