Back To New Beginnings

Each year around this time I suffer from a case of the "phantom disease". It's taken about 6 years for me to realize it's a wee dose of anxiety! This "disease" manifests itself in predictable ways...nausea, sleeplessness, rapid heart beats...you know... BACK TO SCHOOL!

I get it EVERY break from school without fail, whether it's a long weekend, Christmas Break, Spring Break, or after Summer vacation...it's always there in the days before I go back to work.

This year feels a bit different in some way that I can't quite place my finger on.

Summer was a whirlwind: to Oklahoma to visit the fam, back to Abby to move into my first new home, off to Cambodia to visit fam there, home to author my first online course, then to Calgary and now home...just in time for school to start again.

I am going back again to the familiar and welcoming halls of MEI...but something feels strange. I am not sure if it's just that summer went by too quickly, or because I am teaching new courses, or have a new classroom neighbour, or because Wiggy won't be there. It feels lonely, and strange.

It never ceases to amaze me how God's plans are SOOO different than ours. His are ALWAYS better. I know that. I BELIEVE that. I have LIVED and EXPERIENCED that...and somehow still I can't help but wish for a behind the scenes glance at what HE has in store for this year to come. Just a peek and I would be satisfied.

HE calls us to live by faith. Believing what can't be seen. I believe.

Sometimes faith is hard. The reality of everyday life, the messiness of relationships and mistakes and broken hearts feels so much bigger and louder than God sometimes.

Trusting God is hard. The reality of fallenness, and pride, and selfishness, of corruption, and hypocrisy feels so much bigger and louder than God most of the time.

Living a life for Christ is sometimes hard. Some days it feels like I have been walking against the wind for weeks on end. The reality of atheism, polytheism, agnosticism, politics, media, and peer pressure feel so much bigger and louder than God echoing into my mind...

But the Truth is GREATER. My heart breaks sometimes when I watch our world so manipulated. Believing we need this and have to have that in order to be enough.

When I stop and reflect on the proudest moments of my life...I can honestly say that EACH and EVERY one was a result of the work of God in my life. When I take the time to be with God and hear HIS plans life is ALWAYS better.

That is my prayer and plan for this coming year...

That I would become less and HE would become GREATER. That my life would be marked by moments that take my breath away because I have submitted to HIS incredible and glorious plan.

God is good ALL the TIME.

HE has placed me here "for such a time as this" and I am looking forward to turning a new page each day expectantly waiting for the twist in the story HE is writing of my life! BRING on the ADVENTURE!

Off to bed...BIG day tomorrow!