A New Year Approaches...

As I sat inside our apartment listening to the gusts of wind outside that mark the latest midwest blizzard, I decided to take just a bit of rare quiet time to contemplate the approach of a new year. I love New Years. Not for the partying and drinking that usually accompanies it, but for the closure of a year and the anticipation of a fresh start.

Even though in Christ we can have a fresh start any day or time, the start of a new year feels more like a clean slate to me. These final days of 2010 pose as a good opportunity to reflect on life- what has gone well and what needs improvement; the state of my relationship with God and others; and the state of my own soul. I must honestly confess that the reflection is not very beautiful to me this year.

This has been a tremendous year of change. I have been called to learn to be a wife, a mother, a full-time nurse, and a homemaker- and all of these at the same time. I have entered a new local church fellowship, but feel so much loss still at the absence of the old. I have faced the challenge of utter exhaustion and most of the time, I have waved the white flag of surrender to the foes of crabbiness and impatience. While my husband and I dearly love each other and recently celebrated our first anniversary (for which we rejoice and thank the Lord in retrospect for his faithfulness this year and in anticipation for his faithfulness in the years to come) the road has not been without bumps or valleys for either of us. Adjustments have been hard. There have been many tears and sleepless nights. But there has also been a gracious God.

This graciousness is what I often forget.

2010 challenged me deeply. And to be frank, I failed many of those challenges. I often did not respond in love. I was angry and easily offended. I was impatient. Moral of the story: Take 1 Corinthians 13, turn it totally upside down, and you have a glimpse of my heart this year. A clanging cymbal. A noisy gong. I've been a big blob of lovelessness much of the time. I've done the very things I hate and despite my greatest ambition, not done that which I desire to do. Romans 7 has been my anthem.

And yet, at this very place, a new year begins.

So, at the end of 2010, I cling to the promise that the Lord will bring his work to completion, not because I deserve it but because He is worthy of glory and He's going to make that known. I am not making new years resolutions to this end because, as good as they sound, they rely on my strength and passion to achieve them, and if this year has taught me one thing, it's that I am nothing if Christ does not change or empower me. There is no back-up plan. Either Christ will save and sanctify me or I won't be saved/sanctified.

So, 2011, by the grace of God, may you find me clinging to Christ, in whom alone is my salvation, my sanctification, my deliverance, and my life. May you find me void of plans and filled with the Holy Spirit. May you find me different than I left 2010- not because my flesh has gotten better but because Christ is merciful and has helped me to die to it.

Happy New Year. May your 2011 be filled with the only One worthy of our days- Christ Jesus.