To New Adventures!

*R*

{A belated New Year's post}

I had come with some apprehension at the beginning of this new year, 2013. So many times I've made goals only to lose my way early on in the twists and turns that life takes. Just look at last year - the Lord saw fit to allow me to develop carpal tunnel early on in 2012 and I spent the first 6 months in an unknown pain in my hands, and the latter 6 months learning to manage it. For me it was unplanned, unscheduled, painful, and hurtful, but taught me so much about finding that peace and rest by the "well". As I've learned, God knows best and it's in those times of trial that He often teaches me the most about Himself and about life. They are times to be treasured, in a way, and not despised.

I've always done made goals in years past and easily grown discouraged when circumstances later in the year pull me away or when God leads me to focus on something else instead. So this year I've turned a corner....I'm not making goals. I'm going to wait for Him to show me what He wants to teach me in His time instead of trying to be one step ahead of Him and figuring it out myself before He's ready to show me.

I came with big hopes and big dreams last year: my goals to read more books, write more heartfelt posts here and on Meditations of His Love, memorize all of 1 Peter. Some of those goals I was able to finish well in or I wish I could have excelled in a little more. Others went by the wayside entirely. I don't want to make resolutions and goals like that anymore.

"I find, by experience, that, let me make resolutions, and do what I will, with never so many inventions, it is all nothing, and to no purpose at all, without the motions of the Spirit of God. . . . There [must be] no dependence on myself. Our resolutions may be at the highest one day, and yet, the next day, we may be in a miserable dead condition, not at all like the same person who resolved. So that it is to no purpose to resolve, except we depend on the grace of God. For, if it were not for his mere grace, one might be a very good man one day, and a very wicked one the next." - Jonathan Edwards; January 2, 1722

I don't know what this year will hold for me, but as always there is One who holds each moment of today and each hope of my tomorrow in His ever strong, never weak, hands.

"My heart and my flesh may fail, 

but GOD is the STRENGTH OF MY HEART 

and my portion forever." 

~ Psalm 73:46

This year it's a wide-open road in front of me full of adventure I'm sure and many lessons and growth. This year I'm joining the girls at MOHL in the Live It challenge, to put into practice a lot of what God's shown me in previous years. As a hope-to-be author someday, a blogger and writer on two blogs, and one of the "older girls", I want to be authentic - not merely saying things well but living well for the Lord.

 I want to look back on 2013 as the year I decided to break free of the walls I put up; the year I gave God the reigns; the year that I lived my life for His glory to the fullest. No more miss perfect (or trying to be that is)...Being perfect is highly overrated, by the way. ;)

And I'll be journeling my journey here, on MOHL, and on the new MOHL Daily blog we've set up to share with other girls in the challenge {such a blessing already!}

 I expect to have days where I feel like giving up, days of discouragement, and days of trial...just as any other year, but on the whole I know in my heart God's going to do a work in me this year like no other year before. A "new thing" and a new path. :) And for the first time I'm actually excited and ready to take that leap of faith with all my heart.


I always like to pick a word for the year, which I've been doing since I was about 18, I believe, at a conference I went to where they handed out a slip of paper with a word on it. I have so many words floating around in my head this year though:

Love

Journey

W.O.R.D.S.

Live

....and I wonder to myself what God will teach me through them and where He will take me next...


Living for Jesus,
~Rachel~