Facing 2015

I am greeting 2015 with an inward storm. As a self-described melancholy and highly sensitive soul, God has just wired me to feel things very deeply. Today I am feeling the incredible incongruity of life around me. There are weddings and babies born and joyful family celebrations and goals to be made and achieved. All while there is terrible hurt and brokenness, crushed dreams and terminal cancer and homelessness and fatherlessness. I go from one somber meeting in which I am peering into a family's immense shock and tragedy, trying to assemble tender care for a child at the mercy of life's storms, to an exuberant celebration of a longtime friend's new partnership in marriage. I can't shake the weight of darkness while dancing in the light. 

As I have journeyed with my God, one thing I have come to know and understand is that my God delights in entering my messy emotional chaos with me. So today as I dumped all of this confusion in the contrast out onto the metaphorical table between us, I was reminded of the seasons. I want to be "like a tree planted by streams of water that yields it's fruit in its season, and it's leaf does not wither" (Psalm 1:3). A healthy tree weathers storms and droughts and the heat of day because it is deeply rooted by water. It does not produce fruit all year around, but in its season. 

No doubt, as a highly sensitive soul who, for some reason, God saw fit to give a burden and passion for the broken, I will face many storms and droughts in the coming year...Some my own, possibly more alongside others desperately trying not to wither in the face of their own disasters. I long to be planted so deeply by the Source, my Sustainer and Provider, that I do not wither in the seasons of hardship, but instead stand tall and ready to produce fruit in the right season. 

I am reminded that not all seasons yield fruit. Some days and months and years will feel like a great darkness and blanket of snow rests over my soul. Some days will involve the stripping, the leaves falling and anticipating the coming winter. But some seasons will bring new life, buds opening to flowering beauty and a great harvest of sweet fruit. This life is full of seasons, and changes, and facing storms and hardship, and harvesting good things. Yes, there is constantly going to be the good mixed with the hard. But when I am planted by the Source, I am sustained through it all. 

So on this day, when so many are making goals and plans and lofty ambitions for this coming year, I am seeking simply to plant my roots deeper. To cling to my Source and bravely stare down what is to come. I anticipate storms, yes, but I also anticipate a great harvest of fruit in the right season. And through it all, I pray I know my God more intimately in both the withering heat and prolific abundance. Happy New Year, friends.