This is the time of year when we see “Best of” and “Worst of” lists popping up online. I don’t really care about those kinds of lists.

Instead I felt like writing today.

It’s late on a Saturday morning in Fort Wayne.  I heard my wife Kathy wake up and prepare for work before 6 am.   Kathy is an amazing woman.  We met in early 2000 and married a year later.  As she puts it, we are “2nd-time-arounders”, meaning this is the 2nd marriage for both of us.

Last night we went out to dinner at Henry’s in downtown Fort Wayne.  It was an impromptu gathering of 4 old high school classmates that came about a few hours earlier through a couple of Facebook posts. We were part of the nearly 200 (I’m guessing on that number) of graduates of Concordia’s Class of ’78. I have attended 2 or 3 of the organized reunions, the last one in 2003.  While many of my classmates have moved away, some of us have returned to our hometown.  The Friday night gathering featured Cathy, Brian, Randy and myself.  We didn’t all hang out together in High School, but we have reconnected on Facebook and the occasional in person visit.

Everyone of us had been through a divorce. One as recently as this year. Divorce is not the end of your life, but it will certainly bring about changes. As you are going through stuff like that, you have no idea what the future will hold.  As someone who has now been married longer the 2nd time around, I can speak with wisdom that, life can be better than it is as you are going through the breakup.  It is a choice we need to make, but the first step is simply to take another step each day that we are given.

A year ago Kathy and I were wrapping up our last Christmas in a house we lived in for 8 years.  I knew it was going to be different in 2014, but wasn’t sure what the details would be.  We were only using 1/2 of our home and had decided to sell rather than invite others in.

Over the years that Kathy and I have been married, we have had her daughter Abby as the only permanent offspring living with us until she went off to college and then married.  But that 3rd bedroom, the spare bedroom, I nicknamed “despair bedroom”. We had each of my 3 kids living with us, one at a time in that 3rd bedroom.  We also had 3 of my wife’s siblings living with us, one at a time in that spare bedroom.

Not every person living in that room was in despair.  But there were a couple who were and that room became a respite, a place for those who needed a place to stay while they healed, or found themselves, or needed a break from whatever, could stay for awhile.

But a year ago, as I packed away the Christmas decorations, I knew that we had just gone through our final Christmas in that house.

We had considered apartment living.  We looked at various options downtown and nearby.  I also looked all over town and decided that there was nothing that met our criteria yet.  Plans were being made downtown as new buildings were being constructed and older places were being transformed into downtown living spaces, but nothing was going to be ready that fit what we were looking for in 2014.

Plan B was to buy another house. Something smaller, something needing less upkeep.  Last winter was horrendous with the polar vortex freezing everything.  Each of us checked out neighborhoods and saw plenty of places we did not want to live due to the poor conditions of the streets in nasty weather.  We actually began our search with a house just  1 half mile from where we lived.  We made a low ball offer and they didn’t accept, so we started looking elsewhere.

After a few weeks of seeing plenty of places we didn’t want to live, we circled back to the 1st house and made another offer.  It was accepted and now we needed to sell our home to get everything in motion.  We hired a couple of professionals to do some work, but the majority was done by us.  In about 60 days of having our house on the market, we had between 30 and 40 showings and every week, we were making changes to the house to make it more and more appealing. It worked and at the end of May we closed on the house we sold and closed on the house we bought.  Technically we were homeless for about an hour.

Moving day came and it was my son, son-in-laws, step-son and grandson who all pitched in to load and unload the U-Haul.  Plenty of Kathy’s friends and her sister helped before and during the move too.

We purged 1/2 of our stuff. 90% we gave away.  The rest was thrown out and a few items were sold during the neighborhood garage sale weekend.  Each month we are continuing to downsize as we realize the stuff we have that we don’t use and don’t need.

The new house is going to be our final home.  At least that is our plan.  We have adapted all the rooms to a specific purpose for the two of us.  We have our outdoor living space we enjoyed this past summer with a nice fenced in backyard and a play area for young grandkids. We hosted a family Thanksgiving and Christmas and learned a few things about the “flow” and “feng shui” of our kitchen, living room and family rooms.

But while moving is a big life changing event, that was only one on a list of many this year.

Our extended family grew by two.  My step-daughter Abby and her husband welcomed their 2nd child in the spring and we took off for a week to Iowa to see them.  The year before, their 1st was born and we visited them in Nebraska.  This trip was a bit shorter.  No kids are expected this coming spring.

My daughter Rachael and her husband had their 2nd child at the end of August, and so as we wrap up 2014 we are at 8 grandkids and holding.

Being a grandparent is cool.  Due to the internet, we are able to communicate as often as we want with those that live out of town.  Every week we see updates and converse, text or message with our kids about their lives and their kids.

2014 was also a year of employment changes.  As Kathy was able to start drawing some retirement income, she was also able to be more picky as to when and where she wanted to work.  As I mentioned at the beginning, she is amazing. With her varied background in mental health and the medical field, a few years ago she became a hospice nurse. Days like yesterday and today, she is out caring for someone who could be in the last few weeks or hours of their earthly life and doing what it takes to help make the patient comfortable while ministering to the friends and family who are about to lose a loved one.

This month was the one year anniversary for me working at Federated Media as one of the advertising and marketing consultants with WOWO radio. It has been a good year and I’m at a place I believe I can stay as long as I want.

In 2011 I left Summit City Radio after 8 1/2 years and took a position with a local website development company, then another radio station group, followed by a full time social media position.  Each of those 3 positions were going to be a lot longer than they were, but I decided to leave each of them after 10 months each.

So when LinkedIn reminded me of my one year anniversary with WOWO this month, I knew this was a good chapter in my life.  My co-workers range in age from 67 down to early 30’s and the workstyle fits perfectly.  The guy I work for, used to be my co-worker 8 years ago and I was his boss for awhile.  Call it karma if you want, we both call it a blessing to be working together again.

My volunteer work also transformed in 2014 with the outreach program I have been a part of since 2013 with our church.  This summer I was asked to lead the organization and co-organized a weekend retreat. More on that horizon is ahead in the new year.

2015 is less than a week away now and time is moving faster than ever.  The lessons learned are never ending and life continues to offer more and more for me, for you, for all of us.