Stop Looking Back

I've been struggling lately.

The thing I struggle with more than anything is looking back.  Like Lot's wife in Genesis being promised a new land and being show the mercy of God that would save her life and she couldn't keep her eyes forward.  I tend to hold on to the past and what I wanted or what could have been instead of looking at what is and what will be.  I look into the past and sometimes that self destructive person I used to be looks enticing.  I have no idea why, because that person was miserable.  That person hid behind a mask of a faith that looked strong, sounded deep but was really shallow at best.  When I look back I see someone who knew very little about herself and let others and the love she craved more than anything define her every move.  That girl was past. "I am a new creation," my Creator tells me, "the old is gone and the new has come."

I have found a major correlation in my struggling and my time in the Word.  If I am not consistently spending time with God, I am a mess.  I lack self control in almost every area of my life.  For me that looks like eating things I shouldn't, or letting my mind wander.  It creates an insecurity in me because when I am not in the Word and I am not spending time with Christ, I am finding my identity in myself and not in Him.  I am trying to wander through life with a blindfold on hoping that if I keep my hands out in front of me that I will make it through the maze and come out unharmed.  Christ is calling me to hold on to Him.  He wants me to trust that even though I can only see a couple of steps a head of me, He is my guide and He is the Master Creator, the Beginning and the End.

Dear Lord, help me to know that I am loved even when I don't feel that I am.  Remind me that Your ways are so much higher than mine.  Teach me to have faith that can't be shaken.  Help me to cling to you and stop looking back.  

Resolved to Gratefulness

Welcome to 2015!  We are almost 9 days in at this time and I am just now starting this new year.  Every year I, like many other people around the world, create a list of things I will try to do in the new year.  Like most out there, I give it the ole' college try and by March I am back where I was  the previous October.  This year however I am resolving for something different.  I am striving for a heart of gratefulness.

2014 was a year unlike any I ever had and to be completely honest I think most of the year I was just holding my breath waiting on the days to pass and grasping hold of any solid thing I could, in fear of it changing day by day.  I learned so much about myself in the one year I was out of school.  In 2014 my life plan got completely flipped upside down and yet I landed on my feet with a new job, a new focus and a love for Jesus that I don't think I would have ever gotten had He not taken the plans I had made away.

So, here we are in 2015 and for the first time I am choosing to not plan out my goals but instead make a simple but life changing resolution for 2015.  I want 2015 to be a year where I find blessings in the curve balls.  I want to see life through new eyes of grace.  I want to focus less and less on all the negativity that tends to bog us down and just take a moment everyday to be grateful for the life we live.

I just spent 5 days on the ocean with 26 of my family members.  It was so fun getting to sit around a table or lay on the beach and just enjoy each others company.  I looked around and thought about how amazing it was that nearly all of my family on one side could coordinate their schedules to be without cell service and work and just hang out for 5 days.  It is a true blessing I don't think any of us will forget.

For all of 2015 I will be writing down 3 things everyday that I am grateful for.  What are you challenging yourself to?