What Will Be Is

Was it really only this past January that Tech Central Station published my piece about resigning weapons inspector David Kay? Both the writing and the events seem years ago. Was it really only in '04 that I redesigned Dust in the Light? What a year has slipped between then and now! Frankly, I don't think I've ever been more relieved to see a new year begin.

You know all that happened in the world in 2004, and you can go to just about any mainstream news source to find highlights. For my part, I'm mainly concerned with how correct the closing months of the year proved me to be when I wrote, exactly one year ago:

Windfall, calamity, and stagnation are all up in the air. It would take so little in any direction. Blessings and disappointments, breakthroughs and failures come all mushed together, and it is our task to sort through them and figure out which to address. Which direction to head.

In its extreme personal eventfulness, 2004 was much like 1999 — the year in which I graduated from college, found a job, married my wife, and moved into a new apartment. This year, we had our second child and bought a house; I became a seventh grade teacher, proud to be able to be the sole source of income for my household, and then returned abruptly and painfully to partial employment. Within the same time frame as that stumble, National Review Online published my pieces on the ABA and the bishops' political questions. I designed and unveiled Anchor Rising and continued with the ups and downs (mostly downs) of a job search. In the final month of the year, I just barely crossed the financial finish line by working two long weeks delivering Christmas packages.

The new year begins with breakthroughs and failures all mushed together. I've no idea where I'll find the money that's necessary to survive January's bills, and yet, there are two print magazines currently on the stands in which my work appears — National Review and Newport Life. As was true a year ago and when I described the feeling of being at the edge of 2000 in the preface of A Whispering Through the Branches, the year to come is an expanse of the unknown. This year, though, more than ever before, success and failure will have to tease themselves apart. The status quo is unsustainable, and either a day job or the writing will have to pay much better in order for me to manage both.

Of course, it all seems petty by comparison with the calamity that ended the year along the Indian Ocean. There, thousands of people are beginning 2005 facing a blank page, with only the overwhelming heartbreak of the recent past to spill onto it. And the rest of us, amid the stress of our own, more incremental, steps and slips, are left with only charity and prayer to increase the chances that the hope buried within utter ruin will emerge for them.

So, into the fog of a new year we go, hoping that we do not stroll right past life's treasures because, by our own fault or the fog's, we are unable to see them. Those of you who've shared 2004 with me, I thank you. Dim obscurity is much less terrifying with company.

But then, we've always Company. I've come to see the notion that the palpable pain of this world has any relevance to the yes-or-no question of God as silly. Either we conclude from His existence that an explanation for evil must exist, or we approach the question already believing that the reality of pain, which is undeniable, answers it. I, for one, believe that the reality of hope and joy, which are also undeniable, answers it.

Therefore, may He guide you along the secure paths hidden in the year to come. I'll be there with you, but few require guidance more than me.