Ten years ago I was 15 and enjoying the time of my life - I had already traveled abroad to France, Amsterdam, Holland and Tahiti and was anxiously awaiting my second trip to France in the spring.  I had great friends, a great family and was blissfully naive about the world I lived in.  I remember celebrating the year 2000 at a friends house and discussions of Y2K and what we should be doing instead if we really believed the world would end at 12:01 am.

It’s hard to believe that 10 years ago I didn’t even have my driver’s license and that we were all living without digital cameras, HD TV, and iPods and the phrase “there’s an app for that” would have been absolute gibberish.

Ten years ago I had my life planned out:  After high school I’d go to Graceland University, graduate with a business degree and live as a single woman in a big city.  If you know me well, you know that only one of these things went as planned.  At this point in my life I’ve given up trying to plan out every minute of the rest of my life - I’ve given that job to God instead.  Since New Years seems like the time when everyone is looking into the future here are my hopes for the next year and next decade that I hope God will include in His plans.

I have:

• hope for my new job starting in February: that we can make it work with our financial needs and that it will lead me to a career I am passionate about
• hope for me and Dustin that our love for each other will continue to grow as move through the next phases of our life together and hope that by the end of this next decade we will both be done with school and settled in a place we can call our forever home
• hope for both our families that we can leave the struggles of this past year behind and look forward to new, exciting and rewarding adventures
• hope for humanity that we can work toward a world where that is no injustice

So I because I want to test out the question/answer feature on my blog I would like to know:

1. What has happened in the last ten years that you are thankful for?
2. What do you hope for in the next ten years?