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I'm sitting here on the first day of the new year, and I don't feel any different. Twenty-six and I'm already jaded, becoming numb to the passage of time, it seems. My dad put it best, around 12:02 this morning. The most wilting hour of the year is the one right after midnight on New Year's. Right then you feel like everything should be different, everything should be new. But all I felt was tired. Not full of the promise of the new year, just ready for bed.

Which is why I'm glad I've been keeping a blog, writing down my experiences and putting them out there for strangers to read. (Hi strangers!) Because I just spent the better part of an hour flipping through the electronic pages of my journal here, and I can see how far I've come.

I was so lost when this year started. Just home after the most incredible year of my life, and I had no idea where I fit in. Being in Liberia had changed me in some fundamental way, and it wasn't until I went to Texas in February for a training course that I realized just how different my perspective on the world was. I finally realized just how blind I had been.

Life went on from there in a whirl of wedding preparations, and on May ninth I married the love of my life, Phil, herein referred to as the Husband of Joy. The wedding was a blast, but I didn't feel truly settled until I was back on the ship, a place I'm coming to see more and more as my home.

In Benin this time, I met a little baby who took my heart and filled it with love. Love, which was what I needed when I stood at the head of a line of people and one by one closed my ears to their cries, one by one told them no. And just when I thought I couldn't go on, when I thought I was far too breakable to be doing this work, God reminded me that with Him, I'm enough.

The year picked up speed from then on in, with patients that seemed sicker than ever. I turned twenty-six, my second birthday in a row on a ship, and I got a present that I really hadn't expected. Just when it all seemed to be going well again, with babies gaining weight and getting better, and just when I thought that the year was going to hold so much less tragedy than the last one, baby Hubie got so sick. I cared for him, watched him struggle, and on the Monday morning when he went back to Jesus, my heart was shattered.

God has a funny way of picking up the pieces, though, and soon enough I had stepped into a new role, one that challenged me in so many ways, made me think about anything but myself. The challenge was never so great as when we were caring for the VVF ladies.

It seemed fitting that the year ended with my favourite story, the one of Wasti and his mama. It was the first time I had ever needed to know how much a cow costs, and it was the perfect way to end the outreach.

We closed our doors on on November 27th, after I discharged the very last patient, Benedicte, and the ship prepared to sail. We left Benin and I was fully epecting to spend the next twelve days being miserable and seasick. Instead, God showered blessings on me, and I enjoyed sunsets and dolphins and all the stars ever.

And so here I am, after all that. I look back at it and I know that I'm not the same person I was on this day a year ago. I've grown so much. I've learned to love more deeply, to cry more freely and to laugh with even more joy. My heart has been broken and pieced back together what feels like a thousand times, and of course I'm not the same.

I can't be the same when my heart is so different, when everything is new.