A New Year (How About ) A New Appreciation of The CURRENT YOU

Hello, my beloved friends. I hope you’ve had a fruitful Holiday Season and I pray that you are feeling ready for 2023! And if you had more of a depressing, exhausting, and relational- familial traumatic time during the Holidays and you feel odd starting this new year; this post is for you.

Have you ever felt so much like a fraud with the pressure of a new year? Have you ever felt like you worked so hard on something and put in all your effort and it still isn’t paying off the way you thought it would? Have you ever exhausted yourself physically and or mentally in the pursuit of a BIG goal and once you’ve hit it you feel like why did you even sign up for this? I’m not qualified. Then you do it and God shows up for you in a way you never thought possible, and then you’re left thinking. Now what? How am I going to top that? Is my life over now that I’ve accomplished this dream? What is next for me?

Or I thought this would surely make me feel successful. Why do I still feel the same? l feel “not enough” STILL, Do I have to do MORE to actually feel enough? This was already an exhausting pursuit.

OR

Have you ever felt so scared that your life isn’t going the direction you wanted it and it’s scary to make changes even though you KNOW it’s time to make a change? Or you are crippled with comparison, looking at others and allowing jealousy to fill your mind and heart and causing you to envy someone else “highlight reel” without realizing that they have problems as well that you can’t even see. But it’s nice, isn’t it? To dwell on others’ lives so that we don’t have to take responsibility for our own. It’s much easier to be a critic and judgemental of others than it is to jump into the arena of trying something and failing!

Either way, whether you are a mover and shaker and you’re doing BIG AND SEEMINLY (IN THIS WORLD’S -STANDARDS) IMPORTANT THINGS or you feel like a failure and lazy bum who has felt depressed and has no hope for your future. Maybe you’re riddled with fear and paralyzed to living your OWN LIFE and feel the weight of not being important because you’re not in the rat race of what we can accumulate and success this world says makes us important. No matter where we stand we are right. You in yourself and your own merit are NOT ENOUGH. Neither am I!

Good news right? No matter if you’ve made it big or if you’re in the least accomplished lane, you will only gain worth and value and the sense of being enough, in Christ alone. “He is the truth the way and the LIFE.” John 14:6 He alone is worthy of making way for your soul to reach a PERFECT HOLY GOD. His sacrifice is a bridge for you and me. In JESUS, both our failures and successes are ENOUGH and both journeys have INSTANT MEANING AND MIRACULOUS NEW LIFE.

I have felt all of these things and my heart is with you if you’re in a situation similar to uncertainty and confusion at this time.

Nothing like a new year makes a soul ponder if we have done enough or if our lives are actually meaningful or essential. Especially if there are any old wounds in the heart from someone telling us and reminding us that we have failed in some way. I know that when a new year comes my heart wants to understand many things and have many things in place so that I can feel worthy enough to enter a new version of myself to CRUSH MY GOALS THIS NEW YEAR.

Oh, how we are all fighting wind. A life that is truly lived is a life that sees this current life as enough.

Let me tell you something, I am the queen of vision boards for I believe the word of God tells us that “Where there is no vision the people perish.” Proverbs 29:18 I am the queen of personal development and learning and evolving into a better version by God’s Holy Spirit. I love following Jesus and becoming all that he wills me to be! But in the pursuit of allowing him to grow me into a new version of myself I have learned a few lessons. There has to be room for the tension + PAIN and discomfort of growth and the rest of his grace for the current ME. An invitation to allow both a crushing for new wine and a delight and rejoicing and celebration of our current state! A push and a pull of rest and growth.

Not the HUSTLE until you die physically, mentally, or spiritually because you worried too much or you didn’t know how to stop and smell the roses.

I think I’ve gotten a lot wrong in the pursuit of being my best self, I’ve forgotten that I am already enough by the sacrifice Jesus has paid on the cross. I forget to live in the REST that God provides me and I fall into striving and accomplishing THE GOAL over being grateful for the process. The process is often where the treasure is if we just slowed down enough to see it. See life will always feel alien to us. We are built for PERFECT CONNECTION TO GOD IN HEAVEN. We are definitely not in heaven yet so our souls ache with discomfort and longing to be in communion with our God. It’s a way that deep calls to deep. So if you and I can make peace that for this temporary time on Earth, we will feel uncomfortable feelings, we will have a more light approach to the troubles that do come. Every challenge is a HOPE vessel. Read Romans 5:3-5

I think this life is already so hurried. So busy. So marked with all the things that disqualify you and me from feeling like there is any meaning or importance to our ordinary-mundane-boring lives. We forget that there was a time or two when we really needed God and he rescued us! Now that we are FREE we are blind to see where we are standing. At least that’s what I’ve been experiencing. Just the rush for MORE. More purses. More shoes. More things. More TV segments. More brand deals. More content. More...

MORE will run us ragged and leave us dry because as soon as you satisfy the MORE. It needs more. I want to stop wanting more. This year. I want to stop and REST AND JUST BE.

I don’t know how I’m going to do this exactly as I am a blogger who is paid to promote more. But to be honest with you. I just don’t want to do that right now. Right now, I want you and I to see that we are currently on a journey and the process is taking longer than we expected, and we may have not quite “arrived” at our destination but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t ENOUGH. Or Important. In Jesus, we have all that we need. His living water is available to this weary soul and ready to quench us in this drought of NEEDING to become more so that we can finally feel…….. Fill in the blank ( ). I don’t know if you’re anything like me, but I am operating out of a really messed up frame and toxic patterns from my past. So it takes me a little longer to understand that God already knows me and loves me no matter what.

I pray this post encourages you to appreciate the current you! Yes. You (In Christ) are ENOUGH. From that spring of wholeness and NEW life, who do you want to become in 2023?