I Made it Through the Year, and I Did Not Even Collapse.

My goodbye to 2012 was fitting: anticlimactic and remorseless. I set my alarm for 11:50pm, woke up for a few gulps of sparkling grape juice as the ball dropped in New York City, then crawled back into bed and tried to sleep while the neighborhood went crazy with the fireworks. Though I have never been more ready for a year to end, I was tired, too tired, to give much cheer to the new one that dawned. For me, it was more dream than celebration.

I can get so caught up in seeking out beauty, that I occasionally make the mistake of believing that every moment is supposed to be beautiful. But not every moment is like that. Some moments seep through the fissures that riddle our minds and are forever forgotten. Some are brutal and bloody as nightmares. Some are a chalky gray ash that stains our fingertips and turns everything hazy, lethargic and slow.

Because sometimes, we don't get the sparkling spray of fireworks at the end of the day. Or sometimes, the fireworks erupt out of the dark as a thunderous boom that sounds like gunshots, and you will never know that behind the thick curtain of your window, there is a brilliant display of color and light.

And it's okay. It's okay to have moments that are ugly. It's okay to have moments that are nonsensical. It's even okay to have moments that are utterly and absolutely ordinary.

It is not the moments that make us, but how we live in them--and more importantly, how we live from them. We may have a good moment, but it means little if it never builds toward better moments. And we may have a bad moment, but these moments give us the opportunity to learn and change and grow.

Moments are not grains of sand, but droplets streaming in a river, flowing forward with strength and purpose. And if a moment does not make sense, or bring happiness, or satisfy our expectations, take heart, for it is bleeding into something that does--an ocean of unsearchable depths and infinite mystery, whose waters stretch far beyond any horizon, bringing wholeness to our battered souls.