It's a New Year

Happy New Year to One and All!

Year-end recaps and New Year's Resolutions never held much draw for me. That's not true. I do love to read others' lists and promises, but I'm not a fan of making them. I'm more likely to get introspective on birthdays and anniversaries. The passing of a year is noteworthy in that I have to remember to write the date differently on checks and I need to get the lead out and put up the new calendar, but other than that, it's just another day. Ask me about life on my anniversary or one of the kids' birthdays and I'll navel-gaze to no end, but not on January 1.

All that said, the first day of this new year finds me sad. It's been a long haul for some of my friends. For some of them, it's going to be a long haul. It's a very grown-up list of worries: cancers of varying degrees of insidiousness, husbands who are not home because they must commute to far-away jobs, husbands who are deploying (or have deployed) to war zones, miscarriage, divorce, very real job worries, very real family worries, very real money worries... told you it was a grown-up list.

Then something caught my eye. A friend (who happens to have cancer) has a lovely little box on her Facebook profile that I love - love it so much it's now on my profile. It's daily Scripture. Today's verse is Isaiah 43:16-19:

¹⁶ This is what the LORD says—
he who made a way through the sea,
a path through the mighty waters,

¹⁷ who drew out the chariots and horses,
the army and reinforcements together,
and they lay there, never to rise again,
extinguished, snuffed out like a wick:

¹⁸ "Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.

¹⁹ See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the desert
and streams in the wasteland.

Striking, isn't it? "See, I am doing a new thing!... I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland." So despite all our sadness and all our worries, God's making a way. He can make a way in the desert - where no one deliberately wants to go. He can make streams in the wasteland... hold on... It's not that he can or that he is able to do it, He's DOING it. God says "I AM making..." He IS doing these things. He's not promising that He will do something - he is doing something. He's not promising that he can do something - he is doing something. This is God. This isn't someone making half-hearted promises to fix the faucet or go to the bank. This is God. He isn't making promises to do something. He *is* doing something.

Despite my sadness and melancholia, God's got it. I'm so fond of saying "God's got it. Even when it looks like He doesn't, He does." It's so easy to see that for other people. And for the list of friends' worries above, I can see glimmers of Him working. Today, even though I see Him working, my heart still aches for them.

My own life is a little different. God has to smack my upside the head for me to see Him! My list of worries is intertwined in the list above. We're healthy and my marriage is peachy (amen and amen), but I have money worries and career worries. I know God's got it and He'll work for good, but today I feel less like the Mommy who's holding a heartbroken child in her lap and more like the child curled up in the lap. Thankfully, God has a big lap.