Make Your Music (with me?)
I love this time of year. I LOVE that I walked into my home tonight and it smelled of freshly baked bread (waiting for the cooling to be done so I can tear into it..). I LOVE that today is my nephew and godson's first birthday, and that I can pray for his life to be blessed with the same richness that his life has brought to mine and others'. I love that I'm going home soon ... that Courtney is coming home too ... I love that we use red and gold and bells and greenery and spices and sweets to remind us of the beauty and sweet abundance of life when the winter encroaches and threatens to steal our joy with its long darks and heavy frosts.
I get a huge kick out of new beginnings, so I love New Year's, and the fact that it coincides with the mark of my birth date. The rub with New Years and other beginnings is that the flip side marks an ending of something. The theme of the past couple of weeks in my mind has been waiting, counting days down, watching them pass. I counted up the things I felt grateful for, and immediately started counting down til the moment I would see my family again. We're all counting up and counting down, saying hello and goodbye, staying in certain holding patterns, landing and taking flight.
At this time in my life I am beginning to wonder if I have ever really opened up my heart to God. Have I ever spent an extended period of time meditating on His purposes and His sovereignty? Have I really laid myself open before Him to accept the fact that His way for ME is the only way for ME? Have I ever really contemplated and meditated on what that means? It is finally dawning on me that maybe the realization of a true heart openness to God takes time, counting days upon days of small moments of meditation, and asking simple questions such as, "What can I do for You today?" "Where do You want me today?" "Who did you create me to love today?"
I have spent so many days closing in on my SELF. What do I want to do? What am I going to do next? How can I stop myself from feeling lonely or bored or left out or purposeless? It's always been one day of scrambling through to the next day. I'm not here to say anything pretty or clever, but just to tell you all and let you hold me accountable -- I'm looking to open up and stop striving. Just rest, meditate, and listen. It might take me months or years. Eventually I know I will understand better what it means to be a servant of God, and instrument. Instruments make beautiful sounds but they deflect all the glory onto the musician. That's what I need to be -- an instrument.
I get a huge kick out of new beginnings, so I love New Year's, and the fact that it coincides with the mark of my birth date. The rub with New Years and other beginnings is that the flip side marks an ending of something. The theme of the past couple of weeks in my mind has been waiting, counting days down, watching them pass. I counted up the things I felt grateful for, and immediately started counting down til the moment I would see my family again. We're all counting up and counting down, saying hello and goodbye, staying in certain holding patterns, landing and taking flight.
At this time in my life I am beginning to wonder if I have ever really opened up my heart to God. Have I ever spent an extended period of time meditating on His purposes and His sovereignty? Have I really laid myself open before Him to accept the fact that His way for ME is the only way for ME? Have I ever really contemplated and meditated on what that means? It is finally dawning on me that maybe the realization of a true heart openness to God takes time, counting days upon days of small moments of meditation, and asking simple questions such as, "What can I do for You today?" "Where do You want me today?" "Who did you create me to love today?"
I have spent so many days closing in on my SELF. What do I want to do? What am I going to do next? How can I stop myself from feeling lonely or bored or left out or purposeless? It's always been one day of scrambling through to the next day. I'm not here to say anything pretty or clever, but just to tell you all and let you hold me accountable -- I'm looking to open up and stop striving. Just rest, meditate, and listen. It might take me months or years. Eventually I know I will understand better what it means to be a servant of God, and instrument. Instruments make beautiful sounds but they deflect all the glory onto the musician. That's what I need to be -- an instrument.
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