03 Feb Letting Go to Take Hold (Part 1)
It is the first week of the second month of the New Year 2014. Already I feel behind. In fact, I have felt behind since last January… or longer, if the truth were told. OK, since it’s a new year and all, and since we’re being all authentic and transparenty and such- personally, I feel like I’ve been behind since I got married TWELVE and a half years ago. I’m playing this perpetual game of catch-up-with-my-life, but I never catch up to where I want to be. And here I am again in a brand new year, singing the same old song: “I’m running behind… I need more time!” Yes, I have a calendar. Yes, I have bought, read or looked at every time management and organizing book, tool and program available to the modern world. And, you guessed it; I can’t seem to find the time to make the time to really do the thing. Please, oh, please might there be but one other soul out there who might in some way relate to this pathetic diatribe and offer just a wee cup of sympathy?
I’d been harboring a scratchy mood about the coming of 2014 since October of last year. I knew God was birthing another new year, as He always does (duh), but I was trying desperately to shove 2014 back into the womb of chronos in the worst way. “NOT YET!” was my mental mantra. Actually it was more like a mental tantrum. Mantras are much more peaceful and sane, I guess. “Stop pushing me into this New Year! I’m not ready yet!” So, a lot of good that didn’t do.
And here we are. The New Year is in fact happening now and I’m still trying to stop it until I can get a grip. Until. I. Can. Catch. Up!
But a word came to me. Wrapped in the first, brand new days of 2014 was a word I’ve known most of my adult life, memorized over and over… a word of life from the Words of the Life-giver, “I am bringing all my energies to bear on this one thing: forgetting the past and straining- reaching forward with hands outstretched to whatever lies ahead, I go straight for the goal- my reward the honour of being called by God in Christ-” (Philippians 3:13-14, TLB/JBP).
He’s poured that Word over me again and again for the past 13 days of this year. Everywhere I turn, everything I read, everything I listen to- there it is. Admittedly I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and I often have to hear things a dozen or fifty more times before the ding-ding-ding-now-I-get-it bell goes off in my head. “Forgetting the past…” That’s the word. It’s done. 2013 is done and gone, as well as the two-thousand-and-twelve years that preceded it and the eternity that precede them. And grace speaks, “Whatever didn’t get done is done. Not perfectly. Maybe not at all, but it’s done.” Selah.