I often second-guess. I pull away & hesitate & hide away. I don’t easily trust my instincts or my own motives.
I know my weaknesses & my failings, so often I have overcomplicated the idea of calling & purpose until I have sat frozen, doing nothing, for fear of my own heart & getting it all wrong.
When I want to take a leap through the air or jump into the deep, one toe over an edge sends me running back to “safety”…but this phrase ~ “lean into what you love” ~ keeps coming back to me. And I think it’s time. I think it goes hand in hand with trusting the work God has done in me, in believing that my heart has been made new & the promise of Phil. 2:13 that it is God who works in you to will & to act in order to fulfill His good purpose.
Doesn’t Romans 12 tell us that a surrendered life, presented daily as a living sacrifice, brings God’s transformative work within us and His purpose in and through us as we go? What if, at this point in our pilgrimage with Him, leaning into what we love means leaning into what He has sown into our souls?
Maybe it really is as simple as a moment like this ~ following the random urge to take a picture of something that delights us and sending it to a friend for fun, only to find out it aligns with a prayer they’ve whispered just that day and reminds them that they’re seen
by God.
Maybe it is as simple (and beautiful and mysterious and full of wonder & love) as a moment like that. And maybe a life made up of those moments is, intrinsically & naturally, one pushing back the darkness to make more room for light. Maybe the Kingdom is built by these quiet obediences, too. I believe it is.
So, for me, no big resolutions or declarations for 2023. There’s so much I can’t control or know or foresee. So many ways to go off the rails of my own design.
At the end of a year that has tested and tried and brought me to the end of myself over and over again, it’s just trusting the Spirit of Jesus within me. It’s just listening for His voice, giving light & space & oxygen to what’s in my heart, moving when the Wind begins to blow.
I’m leaning into what I love. A good place to start, I think, is the heart of Jesus. From there, it’s a wait & see kind of adventure.