Monday, September 17, 2012
7 years: A Lesson in Thankfulness
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| downtown Madison, Wisconsin |
This past weekend I returned
to my home state of Wisconsin to visit family and friends. It was a wonderful
time, especially because I was able to feel the first winds of fall. Fall is my
absolute favorite season and is one of the things that I miss most since I have
moved to Phoenix. I often find myself pining for fall and then it drifts into
nostalgia for my more carefree undergraduate years.
I was able to visit my
undergrad campus with some friends for an hour or so and as we were driving up,
I braced myself for the wave of emotions that were sure to wash over me. This
was the place that I really learned who I was and who my friends were. This is
the place that I truly came to know the Lord. Many will surely attest to the
magic that is often the college experience and I often miss it. I miss living
in a house with 6 others girls and no heat and I miss the excitement of a new
year and I miss the excitement of football games. And sometimes, I just miss
the person I was then, good or bad.
I truly believe that the
Lord has worked in miraculous ways since I have left college and continued into
Seminary and the person I am now is more conformed to His image, but sometimes
those feelings sneak in. They combine with those feelings that miss college and
fall. They mix with my current fatigue and stress and make me wish things were
different. This isn’t a healthy evaluation of my life, but a pity part that
frankly does the Lord a great dishonor because I am not valuing where He has
chosen me to be at this point in my life and the person He has molded me to be.
This weekend as I walked the
campus of UW-Madison, it was 7 years almost to the day I started as a freshman.
I came expecting for it to be bittersweet because I missed it so much, yet,
this time, it was different. Somewhere along the way, I had chosen to honor
God’s calling on my life my embracing every part of my life now, good and bad.
Certainly, I miss people and those experiences, but I also value the people and
experiences in my life now. And because
I had this mind shift, I was able to learn and remember from my experiences
this weekend not from a place of disgruntlement but one of peace and wonder at
the journey the Lord is leading me on.
As I sit typing this, my
heart is renewed with excitement for the future. In being reminded of where I
have come from and what a journey it has been, the fatigue of the everyday has
started to melt and my heart becomes excited for the new ways the Lord will
work in my life.
“For
I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and
not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11)
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