Over the holidays, I had the chance to catch up with one of my best friends. She is living abroad for a year for her job and is traveling as much of the world as she possibly can. It’s a dream come true for her – quite literally. She has been dreaming about and working toward this opportunity for several years.

It finally paid off.

Now, that is not to say there weren’t a few bumps in the road or obstacles that needed maneuvering. There were several. As someone who was along for the ride through all the ups and downs, twists and turns, I feel uniquely equipped to remark on just how far she has come in a year.

Of course, if you’re anything like me, this time of year typically involves a certain amount of retrospection as well as introspection. I take stock of the goals and resolutions I had set for the year and assess how many I actually achieved. I had just done a bit of this inventory when I met up with her. Like me, she is one to look back and take stock of the changes each year brings.

We ate at one of our favorite restaurants one night with another of our closest friends and caught up on all the latest news since the last time we’d all been together. We talked about her work and her travels. We talked about the differences (big and small) of living in a foreign place, where the language, food, culture, and customs are just that – foreign. Then we each went in different directions until we can be together again.

I went home and kept thinking over the next couple days about all the things we discussed going on in each of our lives. Between the three of us, there had been changes in work, travel, relationships, marriage, relocation, and the thought of kids.

Then, it occurred to me just how much had changed in 365 days, how much we had changed. While we could only steal a few hours here and there, the difference was evident, and I told her so.

My how far we’ve come. It seemed what we gained most from the past 365 days of experiences was…perspective.

As we like to remind each other, “The Man has a Plan, and He knows what He’s doing.” And He does. While it may not always be clear to us or easy to trust and put all of our hopes, dreams, and faith in, what we gain in the end is the perspective we need to see just how far we’ve come. If we’re lucky, we find ourselves in a better place, and we see exactly how and why we arrived when we did rather than when we thought we should.

All the hell we had been through to get here (whether in the past year or many years) makes much more sense to us now. It was all preparation to guarantee we were truly ready, in every way, for the things ahead. That process ensured we truly appreciate, enjoy, and savor them in a way we couldn’t have had we not gone through a bit of hell to get there.

It may have seemed chaotic at the time, but looking back, we can see how every bump in the road or obstacle that made us change course acted as a stepping stone on the path toward reaching our goals and dreams  – or at least brought us much closer to them. All those obstacles we maneuvered had led us here. Thankfully, “here” is a good, perhaps even better place than we’d originally been trying to reach. The road may have been long and winding, but we got there all right.

So as we start this New Year, we do so “looking down from 30,000 feet” and realize “life’s been good to me.”