Just a little over a week ago and it was the start of a new year. I was filled with the hope and promise of a new start. I read so many advice columns on how to make your resolutions, and some on why not to make them. I read of choosing just one word, a three word phrase, one bible verse, but now a week into it and I just feel lost.

One word,three words, one bible verse or a whole chapter of them and I have just languished in a state of seemingly permanent dysfunction, despair and feeling that my heart is in a vise and just can’t get free.

I was having a brief feeling of bouncing back from my six week battle with pneumonia and arthritis in the hips and back. One week of almost feeling “normal” and after a week of trying to gain a degree of activity, I woke up early this morning with a return of the pain in my hips. It just makes me feel so old and comfort seems a distant stranger.

I am longing for do over, a mulligan, a new start to the same year. Can we start over again…en theos ††† j