The last day of the year. How in the world is it already the last day of the year? I still remember the last day of LAST year (I ate so much junk food! It was awesome!). It's true, the older we get ... the faster it all goes. Hold on tight young ones, your mom was right!
This year was a heck of a year. If anything in my life has turned out the total opposite of how I expected it to turn out, 2017 was that thing. I mean I thought it was going one way and it went the COMPLETE opposite.
I sat down at my desk this morning (like I do every morning) and said, "Ok, Lord. This is it." Like today was the last day of the rest of my life, but he knew what I meant. He knows how this year has been. He ordained it. So I didn't have to explain myself.
After years like this you don't have a lot of words left. I'm a writer (kinda/obviously) so I have LOTS of words that have been written that will never be seen. I have over 75 pages worth of words that I have typed just since the beginning of July, but this year has left me without a lot of words to actually share. It was an intimate last half of the year with the Lord. The words I have had, for the most part, have been limited to his ears only.
I went back to some of those words today and read through the last entry of one of the documents I have. I wrote it only a few short weeks ago, but I have no recollection of writing it. I wish I could share it with you here because it made me fall out of my chair (not really I just cried, but that's not as dramatic). I wish I could share it with you because it was a letter I had written to myself as if I knew I would read it today. It was profound. It was not like the things I normally even write. At the time I know I was just getting the feelings out, but it makes more sense today than it did that day. It was like my own words were God's words written a few weeks ago for my heart today.
I live for the big moments. You know? I wake up every morning and pray the Lord will wow me that day with something big, something obvious. Those big things are the things that feel so right. You can't deny the big moments. You can't say no to the big moments. And as the year comes to an end I look back at the big moments and I pray for the big moments to come. I want the big moments!
But this morning I was reminded that the big moments are not what it's all about. I want you to read what I read today because it's important as we move forward:
"The fact of the matter is that the transforming work of grace is more of a mundane process than a series of a few dramatic events. Personal heart and life change is always a process ..... The little moments of life are profoundly important precisely because they are the little moments that we live in and that form us. [Big Drama Christianity] gets us into trouble [because] it can cause us to devalue the significance of the little moments of life and the "small-change" grace that meets us there ... You see, the character of a life is not set in two or three dramatic moments, but in ten thousand little moments. The character that is formed in those little moments shapes how we respond to the big moments of life."
New Morning Mercies, Paul David Tripp
2017 was made up of a lot of small, significant moments that I fear I overlooked. Just because one big dramatic (life changing, Kleenex box emptying, depression inducing) moment happened doesn't mean that all the other little moments didn't matter. If anything, they may have mattered more and I fear I overlooked them.
I look back at that letter I wrote myself and I think about how insignificant it was at the time. So insignificant that I didn't even remember writing it, and yet, it has become the bookend to my year. Something so small will now possibly become something I stand on. Isn't that just the way the Lord works? We are looking for him in the big and earth shattering moments. Every single one of us will look back at the year and find him in those HUGE moments (good or bad), but we will forget to look for him in the small things.
Just like 1 Kings says, "At that moment, the Lord passed by. A great and mighty wind was tearing at the mountains and was shattering cliffs before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire there was a voice, a soft whisper."
He is in a soft whisper, friends. He is in all of the small soft whispers of every single moment of this year and he will be in the same next year. Instead of only finding him in the life changing moments, may we learn to find him in the small whispers of our own voice, in the "I do this every single day" moments.
I pray for you, as I pray for myself, that this next year will be so full. I pray it is full of the Lord in whatever capacity he chooses to use. May we take the time to notice him in the small moments that are shaping us, thank him for the big moments that change us, and lean not on our own understanding of what we see and feel but in all our ways acknowledge him and watch him direct our paths!
Happy New Year!
xo
Krystal
This year was a heck of a year. If anything in my life has turned out the total opposite of how I expected it to turn out, 2017 was that thing. I mean I thought it was going one way and it went the COMPLETE opposite.
I sat down at my desk this morning (like I do every morning) and said, "Ok, Lord. This is it." Like today was the last day of the rest of my life, but he knew what I meant. He knows how this year has been. He ordained it. So I didn't have to explain myself.
After years like this you don't have a lot of words left. I'm a writer (kinda/obviously) so I have LOTS of words that have been written that will never be seen. I have over 75 pages worth of words that I have typed just since the beginning of July, but this year has left me without a lot of words to actually share. It was an intimate last half of the year with the Lord. The words I have had, for the most part, have been limited to his ears only.
I went back to some of those words today and read through the last entry of one of the documents I have. I wrote it only a few short weeks ago, but I have no recollection of writing it. I wish I could share it with you here because it made me fall out of my chair (not really I just cried, but that's not as dramatic). I wish I could share it with you because it was a letter I had written to myself as if I knew I would read it today. It was profound. It was not like the things I normally even write. At the time I know I was just getting the feelings out, but it makes more sense today than it did that day. It was like my own words were God's words written a few weeks ago for my heart today.
I live for the big moments. You know? I wake up every morning and pray the Lord will wow me that day with something big, something obvious. Those big things are the things that feel so right. You can't deny the big moments. You can't say no to the big moments. And as the year comes to an end I look back at the big moments and I pray for the big moments to come. I want the big moments!
But this morning I was reminded that the big moments are not what it's all about. I want you to read what I read today because it's important as we move forward:
"The fact of the matter is that the transforming work of grace is more of a mundane process than a series of a few dramatic events. Personal heart and life change is always a process ..... The little moments of life are profoundly important precisely because they are the little moments that we live in and that form us. [Big Drama Christianity] gets us into trouble [because] it can cause us to devalue the significance of the little moments of life and the "small-change" grace that meets us there ... You see, the character of a life is not set in two or three dramatic moments, but in ten thousand little moments. The character that is formed in those little moments shapes how we respond to the big moments of life."
New Morning Mercies, Paul David Tripp
2017 was made up of a lot of small, significant moments that I fear I overlooked. Just because one big dramatic (life changing, Kleenex box emptying, depression inducing) moment happened doesn't mean that all the other little moments didn't matter. If anything, they may have mattered more and I fear I overlooked them.
I look back at that letter I wrote myself and I think about how insignificant it was at the time. So insignificant that I didn't even remember writing it, and yet, it has become the bookend to my year. Something so small will now possibly become something I stand on. Isn't that just the way the Lord works? We are looking for him in the big and earth shattering moments. Every single one of us will look back at the year and find him in those HUGE moments (good or bad), but we will forget to look for him in the small things.
Just like 1 Kings says, "At that moment, the Lord passed by. A great and mighty wind was tearing at the mountains and was shattering cliffs before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire there was a voice, a soft whisper."
He is in a soft whisper, friends. He is in all of the small soft whispers of every single moment of this year and he will be in the same next year. Instead of only finding him in the life changing moments, may we learn to find him in the small whispers of our own voice, in the "I do this every single day" moments.
I pray for you, as I pray for myself, that this next year will be so full. I pray it is full of the Lord in whatever capacity he chooses to use. May we take the time to notice him in the small moments that are shaping us, thank him for the big moments that change us, and lean not on our own understanding of what we see and feel but in all our ways acknowledge him and watch him direct our paths!
Happy New Year!
xo
Krystal
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