Curled into my fluffy down comforter, the window in my room is blasting cool crisp air into where I’m laying. The contrast of warmth and the biting breeze could not be more perceptible.

The holiday season has always been my favourite time of year. Let me paint a picture for you. This is Christmas: noisy, crowded, warmth, laughter, hugs, smiles, spices, comfort, love; trees being chopped down, put on cars and brought home to be decorated, colourful lights are being strung, presents being wrapped with love, songs being sung, cookies being baked and delivered, and laughter is filling the air as smiles are permanently stitched to children’s faces. And that is exactly how I want to remember it.

However this year, I can’t paint that picture as vividly in my head as I could in the years before. Somehow I cannot get past the fact that people are dying, children are crying and some people are without food or a home. Sentimentalism mixes with the readiness to move on from this year and it suspends into the brisk air—lets face it, we all want this year to end.

I’ve been saying goodbye to this year for a while now, and today is no different. My mind is highlighting what I’m losing—albeit not forever—and dims the details of what has been found this year.

I am leaving behind many things in 2016: memories, tears, friends, family and much more. But as I sit beneath the glow of golden lights draped around the house and the tree next to my bed, I’m more aware now that I’ve unwittingly found in 2016 what I’d hoped to find all along. To me that outweighs all the negative and gloom I’ve seen and experienced this year.

I’ve found it in the laughable moments of my mom and I in her bed as I recover from a bad night.

And in the way the sunlight mirrors the sharp outlines of the mountains on the lucid rain puddles, or me looking down at my short shadow.

It’s been seen seconds before a picture is taken, the second when everyone is smiling with their arms around each other.

It’s in the snug silences of driving with friends or hiking up a mountain  with my dog where the best moments shared are often without words. It’s a glance at each other and looking into one-another’s eyes and reading what they feel.

It’s in the hours driven where viable wifi and phone service isn’t available, the times where all you have is your mind to depend on.

I’ve found it while singing my heart out—in the car or in the shower or even when I’ve cried my eyes out.

It’s been present when a hug lasted for more than a few seconds—something I love dearly.  Or when someone grabs your hand in hopes to show you how much they love you.

It’s been present when I’m laying out on the crux of creation under a sleepy, starry night to watch the stars twinkle in the distance.

It’s been present when reading books of many kinds and pondering what their meanings are.

I’ve seen it when I’m given the ability to give back to those in need and the happy feeling it gives me to do so. The look on those people’s faces show it all.

But it was also found in struggle; the times where all I want to do is give up.

Its shown existence when I trust in loving someone I can’t see. Or in loving someone at all.

It’s in the way the pine trees in my backyard gleam and glint after heavy clouds wash them with their tears.

Often I see it in the faces of friends who remind me that this life is about the satisfying pain of growth and who have cried with me when something beautiful happens or when something bad happens.

I’ve found it in the fireside moments in the summer when conversation is captivating, the conversations about what’s right and what’s wrong.

It proves in moments of embrace and in the sharing of warm meals. It’s shown truth when looking at someone and trusting them not to hurt you when you are most vulnerable.

It’s shown it’s availability when knowing that I have to give up on those who no longer fit into my life—even it it’s so painful to let them go. It helps me realise and let go.

It’s something I’ve had all along this year, and I didn’t realise I was feverishly ignoring it.

I see now that this year has brought me everything I could ever want. It’s been a constant paradox of experiencing its significance and feeling the need to skirt it in conversations with the people who won’t like me because of it.

But even in my most aggressive avoidances, it has miraculously managed to reinsert itself into my painful moments of growth, into the moments after hurtful words are slung into the air and at my back, and into the breath I took when I decided to write this.

Its bigness is sometimes scary, its existence is the biggest relief. Sometimes it doesn’t seem possible, and other times it seems a prerequisite.

It changed the way I view the world, myself and others around me. And it has overwhelmed my heart with love.

What I’ve found this year is something I hope you find one day yourself, Maveners. I hope it fills you and gives you hope like how it did for me when all it seemed this year was doing nothing but crumbling into a pile of hurt and destruction. I hope it makes you alive to all the light this world has to offer the way it has for me—because behind all the tears and destruction there exists a love that is a beautiful mystery.

I’ve found it now, sitting in the warmth of my bed while sipping the lukewarm cup of tea on my nightstand but also in many other ways as you can see. It has helped me understand why something bad would ever happen to good people. It has helped me paint that vivid picture I was having such a hard time imagining before.

What I’ve found this year is God.

I hope you too find something in two thousand seventeen, Maveners. Something of magnificent beauty and mystery, something worth your while.

See you next year, Uptown Maven