*Note: This was written in Jan. and I’ve held it until I published the blog.*
“2020 is going to be the year of new beginnings, fresh starts and seeds planted!”
We all say that at the start of a new season…. This will be the moment things change! …and that rush of optimistic hope feels like pure electric energy. As though all the past stumbling has been washed away and this is the moment our whole world changes. And it does! But in 38 years I’m finding that it only changes if we push past the surge of emotion and do the gritty work one boring step at a time.
With more limitations than I’ve ever had, this year doesn’t seem like the ideal time to embark on a personal development project. But then half of my problem has been seeing things as a project rather than a consistent series of small steps. So, it’s in this season of pivoting that I’m committing to monthly small steps to clearing the clutter of my core identity. I’ll do one action item a month from a list of things that push me outside my comfort zone. These things are meant to uncover buried layers, to learn things I never knew and clarify who I am, in this, my middle years.
The beginnings may be small, and the seeds may not sprout for a long while, but even without a lot of outward fruit I’m going to faithfully invest into learning how to be authentic. Each month just a few steps closer toward who the Father made me to be. Along the way I’ll have to drop the bits of costume I’ve used to shield me from the world.
It’s time to do some shedding! And I’m excited for it! There’s weight on my back that I can’t yet name, and still I know God never intended for me to carry the burdens of who I was never meant to be. I’m eager to see what God will do. To know the me that is right now, the me that my Father sees.