33...and beyond

As I have mentioned, getting back on the horse in this journey has not been easy. The idea of pressing on and moving forward has seemed challenging. I am not that far from the “end’ of this thirty third year. I cannot help but have mixed emotions about that. I KNOW what God has done and that this year is only a start of a journey and not a journey to a destination but it is easy for me to think of all the many ways I have failed in light of my early victories. The miles I ran, the plans I had, the success I felt I was achieving. But as I think about moving forward I cannot help but think of Philippians 3, “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead…” Sometimes I think "forgetting what is behind" gets pigeon holed into defining moments of failue. Sometimes that is the case but I think that it can also speak to our successes. It's easy to become like the quarterback who had their glory days in high school becuase they were the prom king a...

A week ago, in a blaze of exhaustion and tears, I wrote about weariness. I wrote about failure. I wrote about striving.  I admit it, I am a striver from way back. But I tend to strive to a point of breaking and then slip into that dreaded "survival mode" that tends to look a LOT like shutting down. I somehow can manage to keep all the balls in the air and all the plates spinning but in my own heart there is an emptiness and a brokenness. So, for the last week, I have tried to find rest and stillness. Tried is a key statement here because it is not easy for me but somewhere in this all I managed to release the guilt I felt over all my failures in this journey. Failure to run, to eat healthy, to write. Failure to CRUSH all my goals and see the changes I expected to see. Failure to meet my own expectations. My ability to release the guilt came from that truth of that last statement. Everything that was making me feel like such a failure was based on expect...