I look outside my window this morning and I see hope. It’s not tangible; I can’t see it, smell it, or touch it. It’s not external. My environment hasn’t changed. My family hasn’t changed. Our world hasn’t miraculously changed overnight. I didn’t have any visions, dreams, or booming voices from the sky. But today, something is different. I see hope because I choose to. My perspective is shifting. Where there was only a wall, now there is a window. 2021 is a fresh landscape of opportunity, growth, change, and choices. It’s not a resolution that I’ll put to paper and then break in the next month. It’s not a subscription I signed up for. It’s the courage and bravery to choose to be free with myself, how God designed me to be, and not make excuses or apologies any longer.

 

It’s the choice to tear down the idols of people-pleasing, other’s expectations of how I should be, the role self I have taken a lifetime to develop and perfect, and the trap of perfection and comparison. The role self isn’t the true self that God designed me to be. The true self was the life He breathed into me at birth and the new life He gave me when I gave my life to Him. The role self was the changing of my true self to fit the desires and expectations of those around me. Not a role I was chosen for, but yet one I was okay enough with to take on.

 

I think of all my sweet friends who took their last breaths in 2020 – their work on this earth is finished. They have done everything in their lifetimes that they could do – two book ends, one called ‘opportunity’ and one called ‘completed’ with many days, decisions, relationships, and activity between. I almost saw an end in 2013. I’m on the other side of that and yet I’ve squandered my time by allowing a rubber band embedded in my back to allow me to run so far and then snap me backwards to moments of defeat and feelings of not being enough.

 

I didn’t realize that I held the answer to cut that rubber band. I really thought I was doing something because I had learned to run faster and pull the tension even tighter, but it was prolonging the inevitable. That super fast and painful snap back to where I felt like I had to start again. I was never designed to have a cord tying me to choices and experiences of my past. Jesus said that if I walked with him I could do so freely and lightly (Matthew 11:28-30, The Message).

 

I heard an analogy in a leadership class that the will of God isn’t a straight line from me to Him, but rather this twisting and winding pattern that loops around again and again intersecting the will of God multiple times. I could look at that twisted pattern and see how many times I got away from the will of God, but I really should be focusing on how many times I intersected it. For in the twisting and turning, God was using all of it to shape me and make me more like Him. It becomes a twisted and turning path of grace, forgiveness, and mercy. Sinful humanity transformed by the power of an almighty God. I think of the Psalmist David who asked the question, “Who is man, that you are mindful of him?” When we think of how small we are and yet we are chosen by Him, it is humbling. Sometimes this understanding of insignificance can make us feel small but yet so special because of How important we are to our Creator.

 

Insignificance with divine purpose now becomes significant because of who is doing the defining. But our life journey and experiences can distort that feeling if our worth has been defined by other broken people. Insignificance with no purpose means there is no hope. The latter is part of the rubber band tying you to no purpose. As much as you strive to be significant, good enough, worthy enough – you’ve started the countdown until the tension becomes too great that you too are sent hurling back to the pain of your original wound.

 

Look out at your opportunity laid before you. Will this year be pleasant? More than likely not. There will be twists and turns, unexpected losses, and pain as you remove the embedded hook in your own back. Anyone who has experienced healing and growth know that it is by the way of pain you get there. Pain with purpose. The removal and extraction of something, in order for it to be replaced by something better.

 

So join with me, friends. Let’s gaze through this new window that has opened. You won’t be alone in this journey. We have the perfect guide who has navigated this road before and He knows the best way to go. He just asks if you’re ready. The road is called hope where this earthly journey is the destination, and the end of this road is the perfect home He is preparing for us to be forever with Him.