On the First of the Year…
George Winston’s Winter Into Spring plays on the turntable, and the sun shines with that same January crispness it did a decade ago through the windows of my dorm room the semester after I’d received the album for Christmas. I was arranging my (now private) room. For the first time I had a space that was entirely my own. I was a freshman, and so much lay ahead.
So much has changed since then, some I’m good with, much I’m not. My life in no way resembles where I thought I would be at this point, in any area. It’s easy to dwell on that, lose myself in melancholy, and cling to the past. But the past few years have taught me that doing so only stretches wide old wounds and magnifies pain.
I’d like this year to be different. Not in the sense that I try to rush to some lofty, external goal, but that I be who I want to be, with out compromise to anyone save Christ. I begin the year with some of Paul’s words that have stuck in my mind, especially when read in context:
…for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty of and being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. – Philippians 4:11-13
No More attempting to play catch-up, or running to or from old expectations. Now, only an assured, better way forward.
