What Do I Want To Be When I Grow Up?

Looking in the rearview mirror, my husband and I discussed over supper not just what we did in 2023, but “What did God awaken in me this year?” And that went far beyond a litany of our feeble accomplishments to a liturgy of who He is.   

God calls us to much deeper than our accomplishments, but to pray continually, live faithfully, love well, practice grace, and trust Me in this.

God calls us to Himself.

So in 2024, instead of creating an elaborate bucket list of resolutions or goals -- what I want to do -- I am thinking more about what I want to be.  What do I want God to awaken in me this year? Who am I becoming?  I am considering the incremental investments I need to make in my being and relationship with Him for the now and the yet to come.

In his memoir Everything Sad is Untrue, author Daniel Nayeri talks about how his mom navigated their overwhelming hardships as refugees.  "But what you believe about the future will change how you live in the present.  That’s how she did it."

How do we view our future? On what are we staking our lives?  Not what we want to do, but who we want to be when we grow up.

New York Times opinion writer Tish Harrison Warren views this time as an opportunity:  "...the chief value of resolutions is not found in our success or failure at keeping them.  Instead, they help us reflect on what our lives are like, what we would like them to be like, and what practices might bridge the difference.  There is goodness then in the very process of making resolutions.  There is hope in the idea that we can change -- that we can keep growing, learning and trying new things.  This hope of renewal is the point of resolutions for me."

We are not stuck.  We can change.

Becoming calls for continual growth, no matter how old we are, a moveable feast.

Like every year before this, the new year is made up of ordinary days.  What incremental changes can I make today?  In what am I investing this year?  What intentions would you add to your list? 

This is what I am working on:

* Pay attention.  ...to have the mind of Christ. 1 Corinthians 2. 16

*Write something, read something, run something every day.  Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might.  Ecclesiastes 9. 10

*Weave kindness in my words. ...that I may show the kindness of God to him.  2 Samuel 9.3

*Don't interrupt.  ...slow to speak. James 1. 19

*Do small things well.  Do not despise the day of small things.  Zechariah 4. 10

*Listen.  Really listen to others and to God.  ...listen to Me. Blessed are those who keep My ways.  Proverbs 8. 32

*Be present.  Therefore encourage one another and built one another up, just as you are doing. 1 Thessalonians 5. 11

*Reinvent.  Reinvest.  Recreate.  Redeem. Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due when it is in your power to do it.  Proverbs 3. 27

*Ask questions.  Lots of questions.  ... Jesus spoke to him first, saying, "What do you think?" Matthew 17. 25

And when we come to the end of the year, how will we find we are different?  Will others recognize that we have been walking with Jesus?  And by what will we be known?  Not by our accomplishments, but that We are His.

And where do we start?  Not with resolutions, but living intentionally, composing something new right where God has placed us today.  

In his beautiful piece The Singing Bowl, poet Malcolm Guite suggests:

Begin the song exactly where you are,

Remain within the world of which you’re made.

Call nothing common in the earth or air,

 

Accept it all and let it be for good.

Start with the very breath you breathe in now,

This moment’s pulse, this rhythm in your blood

 

And listen to it, ringing soft and low.

Stay with the music, words will come in time.

Slow down your breathing. Keep it deep and slow.

 

Become an open singing-bowl, whose chime

Is richness rising out of emptiness,

And timelessness resounding into time.

 

And when the heart is full of quietness

Begin the song exactly where you are.