The new year is always a time for reflection, to look back on the past year and to evaluate where you are and set goals for the future. Every year when I do this I become nostalgic and either thrilled by progress or depressed by lack there of. This year it was definitely the latter, maybe I am too hard on myself, maybe I should give myself grace but since New Year’s Eve I have been asking myself, “How did I get here?” How did I end up at this point at this time? Was it a mistake? God’s divine destiny? A mixture of the two?
Please do not hear that I am miserable in my life or I regret my family because that is not it at all. I love my boys, all three of them, Ian, Judah and Levi BUT it is a far cry from where I thought I would be if you had asked me my life vision or plan even four years ago. I think of dreams from long ago of living overseas, doing 3rd world missions and being “sold out” for Christ (which apparently in my mind meant living out of a backpack traipsing around the world). I ponder words spoken over me at different points of my life and wonder if I completely missed the mark. Did I mess up God’s grand plan for my life?
I had a word spoken over me when I was in high school that God was calling me into a deeper influence and that in turn I would have to go deeper with Him. It was also said that when people would ask me how I am doing that I would just “ooze God”. When I look back at that I see how that was true in that season but I always wonder is it over now? I don’t feel like I “ooze God” anymore or that I am going deeper. I try. There was a great season of digging a deep well but at some point the depth stopped and the well I had been so diligently cultivating suddenly (to me) appeared as though it was refilling and I was loosing depth and fast. Then my life became a constant game of tug-o-war, gaining ground and losing it, sometimes the ground would be soft and easy to plow through and others it had felt as rocky clay and that I would break my shovel if I tried to push past it. Looking back at that word though I wonder, did I blow it? Did I mess up the depth? Can I go back or is that word now null and void?
When I think about dreams of my past, the ones of living in a hut somewhere in Africa, I wonder how they play into my life here in Texas as a wife and mom. I had so thought God put those desires in my heart so was I not hearing God, dreaming on my own accord or do they somehow make sense in that great big God picture? I wish at times I could see the big picture, have God’s perspective on life and see how this all plays out. Although, I know being a wife and mom is a high calling and so admire the women who want that above all; to me the thought of being solely a wife and mom is more like nails on a chalkboard. I feel almost guilty for saying that. My family is my greatest blessings, to have a husband who works hard in order for me to raise our children and a God who gives me strength and grace to do it, is more than I could ask for, but there are still days where I want more. I see how I will have more in the future but I want it now.
I am Veruca Salt off of Willy Wonka, seriously it is pathetic but to some degree these lyrics aren’t so far off from how I am feeling:
I want the world
I want the whole world
I want to lock it all up in my pocket
It’s my bar of chocolate
Give it to me
Now!
I want today
I want tomorrow
I want to wear ’em like braids in my hair
And I don’t want to share ’em
I want a party with room fulls of laughter
Ten thousand tons of ice cream
And if I don’t get the things I am after
I’m going to scream!
I want the works
I want the whole works
Presents and prizes and sweets and surprises
Of all shapes and sizes
And now
Don’t care how
I want it now
Don’t care how
I want it now
I may not be to that extreme or with those particular things but nonetheless I don’t want to wait for God’s timing, I want it now! I want life to be an ease and motherhood to be a breeze. I want the world, I want the whole world, I want the perfect family and job too please. I want it now. I want to feel as though I am changing the world, starting at home and then through the nations. I want it now.
I know this isn’t reality and that if I could snap my fingers and actually make my life easy and breezy it would be far less sweet and meaningful. It sounds nice though. After nearly two weeks of wrestling with these thoughts I haven’t come up with any answers other than that I am not big enough to mess up the Creator of the Universe’s plan. My life does not carry that much weight and as long as I am doing the best that I can to live submitted to Him, I can not and will not mess up His plans for my life, at least not beyond the point of repair and that is a relief.
