When I wrote my first post a year ago, I had no intention of doing one every year, but as I've thought about it, I feel like this is a good opportunity to evaluate the previous year of my life. I'm past the point of being excited about my birthday, it's just another day, and I just happen to get a little older. I met someone years ago who told me that she made her new years resolutions on her birthday, and while this is not something I'm going to do, I feel that this is the appropriate time to evaluate the last twelve months of my life.
In the last year I have experienced things that did not go according to plan, but have started to learn to role with the unexpected, and see them as part of the process. Along these lines, I have started to really focus on the journey, more so than the destination, and have begun to try and simply enjoy the process of life. I've been learning to cast vision, and do so slowly. I tend to get an idea and run with it, pouring gasoline on coals so that the fire is too hot to do any good. As part of the process lesson, I've been learning to take time, really evaluate, and not rush. I'm trying to build the fire slowly so that it lasts, and can be used for multiply needs. In short, this past year has been teaching me to slow down and enjoy the journey, realizing that life is a continuous process, and that is what it's all about.
The last year has been both an encouraging time of personal insight and growth, and the most trying struggle of my life, I'm beginning to see that those two go hand in hand. I earned my first Master's degree, and I found myself in the most intense, and costly, part of a struggle with someone I never thought I would have to fight against. Seeing my marriage end, dealing with the financial loss of everything (you don't want to know how much this ended up costing when it's all said and done), and now working to be a dad when I only see my girls part of the time, has been rough. With all of this, I'm trying to get to the point of embracing forgiveness. This is no easy process, but I know that this is where I have to go, and what I need to do. This is part of being a good and godly man, and a great dad, and that is all I'm after in life.
Though that is a big part of my life for the past year, it is not all of my life. In the past twelve months I have started to see who God made me to be. I've started to see the identity that He has offered me, and I'm learning to see every opportunity as a chance to claim that identity. I'm learning to embrace the trials and the hardships as an opportunity to grow, and then do something great, in spite of everything, to strive to be who God has intended me to be. Life seems to have given me a bunch of lemons this past year, but I want to take those lemons and make root beer, I want to take what has happened, own my part of it, and do something far beyond anything that myself, or anyone else thought possible. It would be easy to take the safe path, stay on the road that brings financial security, but that road requires me to kill my heart and surrender my passion, and that isn't how I want to live.
As I turn another year older, I'm beginning to see the road before me more clearly. The next few years are going to be rough, I'm well aware of that, but I really believe that if I can endure this, if I can deal with the initial difficulties of this divorce, if I can finish well with my second masters, if God opens the door and provides the finances for my PhD, I'm choosing to focus on the hope of a life closer, and much more involved with my girls, a career that impacts lives and makes a difference, and maybe leaving the world a little bit better than when I got here. In short, I'm hoping to make some really good root beer.
I'm 31, and I'm not at all where I thought I'd be at this age. Right now I have to decide what happens next, what path I pursue. I think I shared in last year's post that I feel like I've wasted the last three decades, and I really don't want to waste anymore time. I want to take what I've learned, take the confidence I've gained, take who I'm becoming, and move forward to what God is leading me into. I understand the nature of some of these challenges, though I know I don't grasp the full extent of what is in store, but I want to own the identity God has given me. I want to continue to grow, and I want to be back in a year, reporting at 32 that God has been faithful, and I've continued to move forward. Next year I want to be closer to my destiny than I am right now. Next year I want to be more forgiving of my ex-wife than I am right now. Next year I want to be closer to what God has called me to than I am right now.
TO GOD ALONE BE THE GLORY!
No comments:
Post a Comment