When All You Can See Is One Step Ahead
Would you do me a HUGE favor? I'm planning my blog content for this year and I need your thoughts. Your opinion helps me so much. (Yes, yours. I mean you.) It takes 3 minutes to take my short reader survey (mostly multiple-choice!) and you'd make me smile really big!
Click here! You're the best!
Now, I need to level with you. The last thing I want to do is write today. I'd rather be bingeing Netflix and eating M&Ms, having coffee with a friend... goodness, even folding clothes!
I took December off from blogging, partly to enjoy the holidays with Daniel and my babies.
But also because I'm secretly nervous. If you saw my clutter and the fuzzy stuff in my fridge and knew that I cried from depression into my journal last week, I have this irrational fear you might not want to hear what I have to say. Between you and me... life has been a little overwhelming the last few months, to the point that I feel too clumsy to write up a "year in review" or "2021 goals" post.
Viruses and politics aside, 2020 taught me so much. I'm learning *again* my limitations and my need of Christ in every moment. While I'm excited about my pretty Sugar Paper 2021 planner and this year's new goals, I find myself returning to the thought, "one day at a time."
This year, we welcomed our darling second boy into the world, and last month I held my published words in my hands for the first time. I also read some really good books, and hosted some of the sweetest guest writers here on the blog! (Check out my top book, Beholding and Becoming, HERE.) I watched my precious boys grow, and I'm so thankful to have faced another year hand-in-hand with my favorite person/best friend/hottest guy on the planet. Plus I have stretched out of my comfort zone as a writer and co-business-owner.
I'm praying that 2021, a year that will hold great change, will also hold a day-by-day reliance on the grace of my Father. I'm so humbled by His faithfulness to a weak and unfaithful me.
Yearly goals are worthy (I've got a bundle of 'em!), but sometimes all we can do is put one foot in front of another.
Can you relate? The truth is, this world isn't our home. This world is broken. We're broken.
But we have hope in a Savior who humbled Himself to come to earth. Almighty God as a newborn, a Lamb dying to save sinners who hated Him. He's promised that He will never forsake us. And his gifts, just a glimmer of the riches we have in Christ, are all around us.
The sun still rises, and there are birdsong and babies and people who love us in spite of ourselves.
Day by day, and with each passing moment,
Strength I find to meet my trials here;
Trusting in my Father’s wise bestowment,
I’ve no cause for worry or for fear.
He, whose heart is kind beyond all measure,
Gives unto each day what He deems best,
Lovingly its part of pain and pleasure,
Mingling toil with peace and rest.
Every day the Lord Himself is near me,
With a special mercy for each hour;
All my cares He fain would bear and cheer me,
He whose name is Counsellor and Pow’r.
The protection of His child and treasure
Is a charge that on Himself He laid;
“As thy days, thy strength shall be in measure,”
This the pledge to me He made.
Help me then, in every tribulation,
So to trust Thy promises, O Lord,
That I lose not faith’s sweet consolation,
Offered me within Thy holy Word.
Help me, Lord, when toil and trouble meeting,
E’er to take, as from a Father’s hand,
One by one, the days, the moments fleeting,
Till with Christ the Lord I stand.
-Karolina W. Sandell-Berg
P.S.
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