The Lost Year

Driving around running last minute holiday errands, my husband says to me, “Babe! 2014 was such a great year.”

“Yeah?”  I was racking my brain to think of any significant milestones or events.

“Yeah. We got engaged, we got married…..”

“Nope.     That all happened in 2013.”  I replied.

“Ooohh. Then what happened in 2014?”

“Exactly.”

He paused for a minute while he tried to think of other things, “….Wow, I lost a whole year.”

Today, January 1st, 2015 is the first time I ever felt completely unprepared for a new year.  I was not ready to write a 1- in the upper right hand corner of my page today.  Everything in me screamed it was still 12- that I still had more time.  I wasn’t ready to start carrying my new planner, because I felt I wasn’t done with the last one.  With so much left undone and unaccomplished in 2014, I started to feel a little disheartened, especially with it being such a milestone year as I turned 30.  And I realized, I never want to feel that way again.

Today, I resolved to never leave a year unfinished again.

After receiving that clear conviction, I felt my focus shift to what I was able to accomplish and see to fruition in 2014.  I guess it wasn’t a completely lost year.  Could we call it a year of transition? 

In 2014 I:
Learned Discernment

For years I have been praying for discernment in hearing God’s voice, the promptings of the Holy Spirit.  It took losing a friend on earth, and finding his voice afterwards that I learned how to tune myself into God’s voice in my mind.  Now that I hear it loud and clear, I’m working on obedience. Every time.

Worked Camp

Working senior high church camp this Summer was an affirmation (that I needed) that I am good enough. That God can still use me. That I am wanted and accepted for His work.

I was blessed in meeting those kids and having the opportunity to minister to them, and influence their lives through social media even afterwards.

God showed me plainly that my story reaches beyond just other twentysomething divorcees. Which added fuel to the fire of my freshly renewed purpose.

Experienced Joy

I am only now realizing, as I type this, the irony of God having me focus on Joy for the majority of this year.  That despite 2014 was a time I could have been more frustrated and impatient and disappointed than ever with our stagnation, He had me meditating and studying and developing true Joy in my life and in my spirit. So that I find myself deeply satisfied, always; despite our current circumstances, or station.  I guess during that, He was also growing my patience.

I know God never gives you anything you can’t handle.  That sometimes before our Promised Land, we have to spend a little time in the desert while He develops specific things in us.

Discernment, Worth & Purpose, Joy & Patience…. I’d say those are all pretty valuable things.  And I didn’t realize I was lacking in any of them.  So instead of Lost, let’s call 2014, The Desert Year.

The greatest victory of this year is that without even trying, I have already had other people take notice of these developments in me, and reach out to ask how they might develop them for themselves.  Two people have already asked me to “mentor” them in their goals this year.  The years when I was working so hard to prove what a leader I was, no one ever noticed.

God can do so many greater things in us than we ever can on our own.  No matter how many books we read, or how many audios we listen to, while those are important, more important than that is simply letting go, listening, and allowing God’s Spirit work to in us to develop exactly what we need for Him to use.

And if that’s the only lesson I took away from 2014, I’d say it was a pretty good year after all.