2012: The Year in Review

Today we look at what was accomplished in the year 2012 by Spiritual Spackle, Better Life in Recovery and me personally. The last part will focus on speaking, writing and family events for the year. We have had some goals that did not come to fruition. We will talk about those in the next blog as we look to the plans and goals for 2013.

Since we are on the Spiritual Spackle blog, it is fitting to begin with how the year was to my blog. At the end of 2011, my blog was 7 months old. There had been 6,500 hits on the blog. It had been visited by 50 different countries. Since then, the numbers have really increased. I now write several times a month for the Poached Egg, an apologetics website found at www.thepoachedegg.net. That has been a boon to the reach of Spiritual Spackle, as it has now had over 23,000 hits and reached 104 different countries.

Better Life in Recovery (BLiR) got off to a good start. For starters, Josh Thomassen with IFLE (www.iflecreative.com ) created the BLiR logo for us. We filmed several more people for the documentary and now have 10 interviews completed. We have the websites for BLiR (www.betterlifeinrecovery.com and www.betterlifeinrecovery.org ) and the .org is currently being worked on as the main site for BLiR. Finally, our board has two people that want to be on it once we form the non-profit.

The very first BLiR event was held in Ash Grove. It served as an outreach to the communities youth and was a success largely due to: Center Baptist Church of Ash Grove, Life Fellowship Church of Springfield, the Carmen Burgess Band and Rural Compassion. It was an event that featured live music, games, giveaways, testimonies and a positive message of hope.

Over the year I completed a couple more chapters for the book that will be entitled, Spiritual Spackle. I got the first 2 chapters back from an editor and am awaiting getting back 2 more chapters. I shared my testimony with 2 Celebrate Recovery groups, spoke at Life Fellowship Church, led chapel at Global University and at the Assembly of God Theological School. That kept me pretty busy, yet I feel I have not yet shared the best of my year.

The best and biggest event of 2012 for me was the birth of my daughter, Addison Grace. She came into the world on August 12th weighing 10 pounds 2 ounces. At birth she had several holes in her heart and cataracts in both eyes. She has since had two eye surgeries yet remains the happiest baby I have ever met. My son DJ is  both amazing and 5 this year while my wife Julie remains the most Godly woman I have ever met. Life is good!

As you can see, 2012 has been quite the blessing. I have had a lot of positive things happen, both in my life and through the ventures I am involved in. 2012 was a good year for Spiritual Spackle and Better Life in Recovery, but I am happy to see it ending. After all, I have a lot of plans for 2013. We'll talk about those next time in the last blog of the year.