Happy New Year, everyone! I think it goes without saying that this coming year will bring extroardinary change to my life, in my worldly travels and conversations but also in my self-focused, inward journey. To be sure, I'm excited about my trip to India and the opportunities to experience new places and cultures, but I'm more excited about what it will do to me and in me. I desire to develop a mindset that is outward-focused, one which grows joy and furnishes love towards others that will in turn enhance my capabilities and desires to love and give more in return. I pray that it will be an ongoing cycle of deepening grace and faith. I believe India will provide the landscape and the situations for me to confront these desires head-on. It will challenge me in ways I can't even imagine right now, and I am so excited for that.
However, I am trying to be very careful that my own desires and plans do not get in the way of God's desires and plans for me. I've found it a very prevalent theme in my life (as I'm sure everyone has at one point or another) that I oftentimes do not understand the way in which circumstances took place and how they were meant to change me until after the fact. Simply put, when we are head-deep in our struggles and day-to-day living, it's really hard to maintain clarity and peace of mind. Later on, though, we find ourselves capable of looking back with wisdom and discernment on the concerns of our past, by which we learn more about ourselves, make changes and grow. One of my prayers for this upcoming trip, and one which I think God desires for me as well, is to be able to step outside of the things I struggle with at home and examine them clearly and objectively through a clearer lens. I presume that the challenges I face in India will become metaphors and analogies for the problems I face at home and in my own life. Hopefully, I will keep my mind sharp and recognize these correlations, though I am sure that I will miss many of them. God reveals things in His own time, and it is my duty to wait on Him whilst serving, as He has taught me to, in the meantime. The knowledge that I can't see things clearly now (and I desperately want to... to be able to just fix all of my issues, my family's issues and the issues of the world) just deepens the comfort I find in the assurance that I will one day understand.
Of course, India is only the first half of this next year. There is so much to look forward to in the months beyond India, including transferring to a new school to finish my last two years of undergrad next fall (stoked), the opportunity to delve further into my field of study through more reading and hopefully a very good, revealing internship with some sort of counseling center, and (selfishly what I look foward to most) the continued deepening and strengthening of my relationship with Peggy. This I feel will just get better and better as we strive to better understand ourselves and each other through our relationship with Christ, as well as struggling to overcome familial issues and the inevitable disagreements that come with a serious relationship.
Friends, my prayer here goes much, much deeper than myself. For all of these desires and hopes I hold for my own life, I also hold for you. Our lives and experiences are not very different at all, and I know that you struggle with all of the same things that I've talked about, that as you've been reading this note you've been thinking about your own lives and about how much you desire peace, knowledge and understanding as I do. It does not matter that you may not be taking a trip somewhere far away; you have the amazing opportunity, right now, to look on things with new eyes. So may this year be a year of greater hope, greater understanding and greater dependance than ever, for all of us, on the One who delights in us and is ever drawing us into deep love.
A very Happy, very Blessed New Year to you.
Aaron
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