We're hours away from 2017 being shelved into the annals of history, one to be remembered for landmark human achievements like fidget spinners, colored slime, unicorn frappuccinos, and Sriracha stout beer. (No, folks, I'm not making that last one up.)  Luke, our toddler, is dancing like a drunk Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof to Nick Jonas' performance in Times Square, and Grace and Evie, our eight and six-year-old girls, are playing with the new Shar Pei-Terrier puppy we just got today.  The fireplace is crackling and the bubbles in my champagne glass are rising to the top like whirling dervishes. 

2018 is on the horizon, just a short couple of hours and one Mariah Carey meme-inducing performance away before we wake up to a new year. And in this moment as the final minutes tick away, I find myself stressed with the great unknown that is 2018. I sip my champagne quietly while the insecurities in my head wage war.

Sip. Who will I talk to now that dad is gone?
Sip. When will I stop feeling like a fake in my business?
Sip. I've tried everything short of surgery. I'm never losing weight.
Sip. What am I doing? Every. Day. What. Am. I. Doing?
Sip...

Just before I completely break down like George Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life and start yelling "...and why did we have to have all these kids," I glance over at the coffee table to my right and see a couple notepads filled will long itemized lists scrawled out in kid handwriting. The sight of the lists briefly suspends my meltdown. I see a few random entries from my quick glance.

26. Annie is safe
2. Grampa's With god
4. Fredericksburg trip
33. Sam has a job
3. Giting a neu puppy
14. DaDDy is Doing A Varry good job with Work.
21. Healthy Lauchners

Just after Christmas day, I had the family come sit in the living room and participate in a milestone exercise that our pastor had introduced to us a couple years ago. The premise of the exercise was to memorialize God's goodness just as the Hebrews had done after the Lord delivered them from Pharaoh and helped them cross the Red Sea. On the banks of the sea, the Hebrews constructed a monument out of stones and boulders to give witness to the power of God and the miracle he just achieved. They did this so that their people and the generations to proceed them would never forget what God had done for his children.

We don't have persecutors chasing us in chariots and God is not parting Lewisville Lake for us to pass through. (Would we want to see what's at the bottom of Texas lakes even if he did?) But we don't have to be metaphorical about our struggles either. To borrow from one of 2017's top trending phrases, the struggle is real and no one is immune from it. Not the rich man, the hipster, the baby-boomer, the millennial, the rad ones, the wallflowers, the confident, the defeated, the c-suites or the cheap seats. We will all walk through the valley at some point. And the only thing that determines how long you stay in that valley is God's goodness and your belief that you deserve that goodness. And for me, that goodness does come from God, but anyone else reading this can easily sub-in their own higher power whether that be Buddha, Allah, Yahweh, the Universe, etc.) The point not to miss is that you can't start a new year remembering only the negative events of the past because that's a false reality. When you sift through 365 days from a positive angle, you will find the gems. And that's just what my family found. Ninety-six gems to be exact. Here are some of the highlights:

• Grandpa done with suffering
• Lot Thirty Two staff
• Marshall saving Stoke
• The Days getting into Corinth Classical
• The girls' summer ice cream business
• Good doctors through Obamacare
• Hurricane Harvey
• P-Bear promotion
• Daddy can be home more
• So many friends and family
• The new painted walls

Wait. What? New painted walls? Yes. That's not a copy and paste error. My eldest daughter, Grace, had that as number 30 on her list of things to thank God for. In November we hosted a large Friendsgiving get-together, which meant Jenny and I were in a tizzy beforehand getting the house "guest-ready." That meant finally patching up the hole in the bathroom where the bathrobe hook had fallen out of the drywall and throwing all the kids' toys from the living room into the garage to give the illusion that adults still run this joint. In the extensive honey-do list for the party was a task to repaint the dining room from the bordello red we had picked out in our twenties to a mild sage green that reflected our every approaching forties. And, we knocked it out--no sweat. We painted the walls and had the party.

Now I don't know why on earth Grace singled out that event as something she was thankful for in 2017, but what I do know is this. If she can get that granular in God's presence within her life, then why can't I? If I looked at the blessings of my life under a microscope like she did, the petri dish would be crammed with more surprises than a water sample from Lewisville Lake.

I surveyed the lists of milestones my family compiled one more time. With each entry, I am reminded just how damn lucky the Hargis family is and my anxiety begins to subside like the slowly diminishing bubbles in my champagne glass. I have no idea what's going to happen over the next 365 days. All I know is what God has done in the previous 365 days.

I have new painted walls.

And based upon that knowledge, I will choose to dance foolishly like a toddler on the good days and take my licks on the bad ones. Everything else in between can be just that, everything else. 

So, here's to 2018, my friends. May it be filled with God's blessings, a Cowboys post-season, and better beer that isn't condiment flavored.