I’m looking back tonight at 2013 with a whole lot of gratitude.  It was a year of recovery and resuming, of slowly getting back some stamina and learning how to be healthy again.

I could measure recovery with my driving trips.  How long could I drive without being worn out?  How easily could I carry around luggage?  How many days after a trip did it take me to recover?  How far could I walk – and for how long?

I could also measure my recovery by walks in the Chickamauga Battlefield, just a five-minute drive from my house.  I took my first post-chemo walk there, one of about 100 yards.  I walk much farther and faster now.  Not very fast or very far yet. . . but I appreciate the progress.

I was fortunate to have several trips this year.  Savannah was, of course, a destination (more than once), but I also made a pilgrimage to Milledgeville, return trips to Sacred Heart Monastery in Cullman, AL, and two long trips.  One BIG, long trip was to the Tetons and Yellowstone.  And the one I just made was to New Hampshire.  Two years ago, I couldn’t come close to doing that kind of driving.  Across the country to Wyoming and Montana, and a couple of months later up to New England?  No way I could have done that in 2012!

You know what I think all of this means?

That I’m back!

So here’s a look at my 2013 life.  How blessed I am!  Though you don’t see them in the photos, friends and family were with me in many of these.  I’m extra blessed by the presence and love and support of wonderful friends and loving family – especially my very kind and generous sister.

I look back at 2013 tonight with so much gratitude.  I don’t know how 2014 could be any better, how I could be any more blessed.

But I’m thinking that, somehow, in some wildly wonderful way . . .

I just might be!