Say "Goodbye" to Welcome "Hello"

     

Happy New Year, dear friends!

I wish I could sit down with you right now and hear your story.  Share life.  I wish you could tell me all about your New Year celebration, your goals, your dreams, the future you imagine God leading you into.

I wish we could share about 2018.  The hurt we felt.  The tears that fell.  The moments that pain eased away, and we rejoiced in celebrations and victories and joys!  The times we couldn't help but dance because we were just overwhelmed by God's grace!

If we were walking through the woods by my house as we looked back on the past year, I'd bring you to my favorite place.  Where the trees break to let a small creek flow between two smooth rocks, we'd sit and dangle our feet in the water.  Or, if it's a breezy, cold day, we might stand there, stomping our feet, silhouetted against the dormant rose bushes.

I'd share the victories and joys - friends becoming neighbors, welcoming a new baby into the family, making new friends at the Glory Writers retreat, a graduation, a relative healing from her cancer, writing The Torch Keepers with the Lord's guidance and seeing Him use it to win a contest, and those overwhelmingly beautiful times of worship.  Even the little things - those notes in the mail, the challenges God helped me overcome, the changes in life.

But there were hard things too.  Long, mundane semesters of school.  Phone calls announcing someone on the verge between life and death.  Those dry times where I feel far from God.  The months of fighting cancer over with the gentle, last breath.  Tears.  More deaths.

If we were talking alone, I'd tell you that 2018 was beautiful and hard and tearful and victorious.  In it, I learned the beauty of peace, glory, love, surrender.  And I learned that no matter what, God. is. good.

As the New Year slips around, I'm looking back with so many emotions building up in my chest.  I won't forget the memories.  But I still have to say goodbye, like I did to those people who slipped from this earth into Heaven.

Yet it's okay.  Because without "goodbye" there would be no "hello."

   

I want to dance with Jesus into 2019.

To seek Him fully, love Him fully, trust Him fully.  I want Him to direct these goals and dreams that grow in my heart.

No matter what comes in 2019, I trust Him.  As I say goodbye to an old year and welcome a new one, I embrace the adventures to come.  The hard things.  The challenges.  The victories.

And even the tears.

Dear friend, if I took your hand in mine and lead you through our creek, we'd find ourselves surrounded on both sides by trees.  And then, after swinging on the vine that drapes across the water, the trees would distance.  A little clearing opens to our left.  Around it, there are these stones that peek at us like the edge of the mountain.

There's a log there.  I'd walk across it, trying to hold my balance.  When I got to the end without falling (obviously *cough*), I'd turn around and smile.

Friend, I love your dreams and hopes.  Your future is beautiful.  It might be stained with dirt or blood or tears, but it's beautiful if you let Jesus write your life story.

So dream away.  Scribble down the resolutions you hope to reach this next year.  But hold them lightly so Jesus can take those goals and erase the words, writing a more perfect story for you.

As we slip out of the clearing, I would lead you up the hill through ferns and moist leaves.  We'd come into my house, where a dozen people live in not-so-quietness.  The solitude would slip away as you prepared to leave.

I'd wave from our porch, saying goodbye like I'm saying to this old year.  If you never left and I never said goodbye, I couldn't say hello to welcome you again.

So goodbye, 2018.

And hello the new year with the dreams and hopes and memories to come.

Because we can't talk face to face right now, let's share in the comments.  What are your dreams for 2019?  Where did God take you in the last year, and where do you hope He takes you in the months to come?

Happy New Year, dear friend!

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”;  whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.

- James 4:13-14

You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.

- James 5:8

~♥~