A New Year

This year I've resolved to write more.  Not like a New Year's resolution... because let's be honest.  Its January 16th and this is the first time I've put "pen to paper" so to speak.  Writing makes me happy, and I think we should all try to do just a little more of what makes us happy.

I've been thinking a lot about the concept of a "new year". We have a big party to celebrate it coming, without thinking of what it really means. I have been thinking about how the new year can sometimes make people feel inadequate, because of all the things they set out to do before the "new year" came, and maybe didn't get done.  We then decide that we are failures and that we accomplished absolutely nothing in the last year.  I challenge you to look at life just a little bit different.  365 is a long time, and I believe that God uses us during those 365 days to change.  Now, you might not be changing necessarily for the better, or worse, but you are changing.

Look at some things that happened in my small life over the last year and tell me if you think God can't use a year no matter what.

This time last year:

I hadn't laid eyes on Autum Joy Nennig. 

We didn't even know what this precious little girl was going to look like. 

My dad had not started and finished his first triathlon

Alec hadn't even been diagnosed...

Or... (thank you Jesus) cured of Cancer.
Gets me every stinkin' time. 

My sweet baby sister hadn't even done this yet.
I cannot look at this picture without getting weepy.

Sweet Alayna Grace, wasn't even 5 years old yet. 

I thought I was never going to graduate from college.

And Grace wasn't even home with a healed heart.

The list goes on and on.  This year my sweet friend Jenna decided to move to Kenya to be used exactly where God wants her, and Stephanie got a real life teaching job where she is making a huge difference.  I got a new job and Seth shepherds some sweet students at Fox River Waterford.  

God will use your year when you're not even looking. Sometimes we feel like He is going to use us whether we like it or not. If you are open to his voice and anxiously waiting in hopeful anticipation, God will use your year.  He might not use it the way that you had originally hoped for, or the way that you *really* wanted him to (ahem, I know a thing or seven about that), but He will use you.  He didn't put you on this earth to waste away into nothing. God is always, always using our days to shape who we are going to become.  And it is up to us know we respond and use those days that he has gifted to us.  What are you going to do with the next days that God has decided to give you? You can love, laugh, struggle or waste them.  It's completely up to you.

We have 349 days left in 2014 to let God use us.  Are you up to the challenge?

Remember, He's already there.