The Year of Trust

January 2, 2013

The old calendar has been taken down, replaced with its successor.  The days lie before us in a clean chart; 363 of them.  A whole new year.  I know that I have shared with a few of you that I am participating in Ann Voskamp’s “Joy Dare Challenge.”  Instead of making a list of things to accomplish this year, I want to make a list of gifts, of gratitude, of joy, love, hope, faith, family and friends.  I have begun a little early, (December 18^th) because I didn’t want to wait to begin this faithful record.  At the moment I am sitting at number 32.

Ann gives you a dare prompt, giving you on average 3 things to look for each day, but I have found that the more you look the more you find.  So I am not limiting myself to those 3 things.  She also records gifts through her camera, so I shall try to capture some of these things as well, visually, on top of writing them down.

I want to look back over this new year, as it draws to its close in 363 days, with gratitude and thankfulness.

Something else that Ann does is she gives every year a theme, something that she is striving for within the year, something to remind her.  So I have given this year a theme.  And my theme is something that I struggle with, something that I long for, something that I crave, from God and from my friends.

This year is going to be “The Year of Trust” I have also assigned a verse to this year: Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.  Plans to prosper you and not to harm you.  Plans to give you a hope and a future.”

It is my prayer going into this year that this verse will empower me to Trust more.  Even in myself.  I must learn to trust, because otherwise that old snake has won.  For he wants us to be distrustful of our Abba, our Heavenly Father, the giver of all good things.

I watched Soul Surfer for the first time today.  The message that came through Bethany Hamilton’s story most strongly to me, as I choked up multiple times, was that Our strength comes from the Lord.  “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Phillipians 4:13

Also, we cannot know His plans.  They are on such a enormous scale, that we cannot even comprehend the size of them.  But, when the worst comes; when your beloved earthly father is taken Home to Heaven by the painful vehicle of Pancreatic Cancer, when a shark bites off your left arm, when all of the evil and hate that spills out of our own sinful, broken darkness onto a classroom, we still have to believe that HE LOVES US!

He loves us so incredibly much that he sacrificed his own son, his ONLY son, so that he could officially adopt ALL of us as his sons and daughters.  That he could provide for us a heavenly home, one that will be far beyond what any of us can even imagine. Even beyond the descriptions found within the Bible.  He sent his son, who was a intimate part of himself, to torture, and the most incredibly painful death that our dark, sinful, evil minds had thought of at the time.  Death on the Cross.

And maybe it is the fact that I have been reading Ann Voskamp’s blog http://www.aholyexperience.com as often as I can, and she has a way of manipulating words to create these beautiful word images, that reminds me of Him and His love for us.  All I know is that I want this year, “The Year of Trust,” the year of 1,000 Gifts, the year of adventures and cooking, I want this year to be more filled with Him than this previous one was.

I am going to ask my girls in Awanas to help me with this a little.  I am going to have them challenge me to memorize scripture, just as they are memorizing it.  I am going to start with Psalm 121 and then move on to Psalm 139.  They are personal favorites of mine and I want to know them intimately, in my heart, not just sections in my head.

I don’t know where I am going next, once I am finished here at Fort Wilderness next August.  I have ideas of what I would like to do.  Culinary School features in one of those ideas.  Perhaps, in a little over one week, I will have a better idea if that is the direction that I am to pursue. 

I do know that I am going to write.  I am going to dive deeply into my fictitious world and create new characters and possibly even new species!  I am going to get my Novel critiqued and possibly published. I am going to try and share some of the love that I have with others through words and relationships on paper.  I will trust, and try to be open and honest and loving and forgiving, especially when I find that I don’t want to be.  And when I find that I cannot do it in my own power, I pray that I will lean into his grace and love and find there the strength to carry on.

I also know that for the moment, I am living in my own private, personal winter wonderland.  This weekend, I am going to get sized for Cross Country Ski’s and I am going to go skiing and snow shoeing, and I am going to revel in the crisp cold air, and the stillness that always seems to accompany the fall of snow.  I am going to admire snow hanging heavy on pine boughs and our guests ice skating in the evenings on the Ice Skating rink, with the blue and green lights turning it into a wonderland.

And I am going to get dizzy on the Vippa Kalka (spelling?) and get out of breath climbing the stairs back up to the top of the tubing hill.  I am going to walk out onto the center of Spyder Lake and gaze in wonder at the beauty of the stars, Orion showing off and Sirius shining brightly from Canus Major.  I am going to cook good tasting, filling, hot meals for staff and guests and I am going to do this with a spirit of wonder and gratitude.  And

Joy!

And next Tuesday, I will drive roughly 5 hours south, to West Chicago to help celebrate my Sister’s marriage.  John & Anna, January 12, 2013.  It will be beautiful.

So, even though our world is filled with evil, and darkness, sin and selfishness, it is also a world filled with beauty and love and grace and laughter.  And families who love each other and look forward to spending time together and celebrating Love and Marriage.

Overall, the world is a pretty nice place.