My Next 30 Years...

For the record...30 feels nothing like I thought it would.

I think I thought that I would feel old, maybe a little uncool...definitely more like an "adult." But the truth is I feel more alive, more like "me" really than I did when I turned 20. Maybe because the "me" at 20 was more like the me I thought I should be, and not the me that God created me to be.

There's a big difference.

And it's taken the last 10 years for me to only slightly begin to figure that out.

As i'm taking some time today to reflect back on my 20's, there are a lot of things that, knowing what I know now, I would have changed.  But then again, would I really? Because some of those unwise choices, heartaches and struggles certainly have paved the way for me to reach out to Jesus in a real way, and intentionally take a look at who I really am, and who I want to be.

A big part of me feels like the majority of my 20's were a selfish struggle. God, fix me, help me, show me, define me, give me, love me...I've spent the first 30 years of my life trying to figure out and define who I am...how people see me, only to realize that I don't want people to see me at all.

I truly, from the depths of my heart, want them to see Jesus in me.

And so as I step off into this fresh new decade, fully loved and fully aware in who God designed me to be, I want to change the word from "me" to "You".  God, how can I love You, serve You, desire You, reflect You more in all I do.

I am so grateful for where i've been, where I am now and where I am headed...and for all the amazing people God has placed in my path along the way.

I am grateful that God is much more creative than I am, because His plan for my life so far has been WAY cooler than what I tried to map out.

I am grateful for way too many things to list in this blog.

I am grateful.

Jamie

What are you waiting for?

My wise friend Jeanne Stevens once said "when God waits He always gives a promise & when God waits it's always with a purpose."

But what does it really look like to wait on the Lord?

Sometime we wait for answers. Sometimes we wait for reassurance. Sometimes we wait for an apology, for a job, for direction, for healing, for money, for love, for someone to change.  Sometimes we feel like we wait against our will. Sometimes we wait because we’re afraid to really go where we sense God leading us.

But how many times are we genuinely, truly, desperately from the depths of our soul waiting on the Lord…and how many times are we really just waiting on Him to give us what we want?

If we’re really honest, how many times do we actively wait on the Lord with confidence in His wisdom and love, trusting in His timing and promises…genuinely seeking His presence and sovereignty? And how many times do we merely impatiently pass the time until He finally gives us what we thought we should have already had by now anyways?

In the past 10 years I have found myself in multiple seasons of waiting where all I was really waiting on was for the season to be over.

I wanted clear direction for my life.

I wanted the hurt to be gone and the healing to begin.

I wanted to be out of the job that I dreaded going to every day.

I wanted to know whether or not I had a life threatening illness.

Looking back now, I think that some of those seasons may have been preparing me to actively embrace waiting on the Lord later on. Each season of waiting, in some form or fashion, has strengthened my confidence in who He is and in what He is doing.

There’s a key word in that sentence above…one that I’ve missed many times over in my seasons of waiting…

Actively waiting.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that God doesn’t intend for our seasons of waiting to be stagnant times where we’re sitting around fruitlessly twiddling our thumbs. He wants us to be actively seeking…actively praying….actively trusting that He will reveal to us our path when His timing is right, not our own.

“The LORD is good to those who wait for Him, to the person who seeks Him.”

–Lamentations 3:25

So what are you waiting for?

Jamie