The End of Decade

There are 57 minutes left of my twenties.

Turning another year older doesn’t usually bother me, but this year is different. It’s quite strange to be leaving a decade behind and begin a new one. I don’t really know how to explain how I’m feeling.

I have been reflecting on my twenties and there are so many great memories:

the college days at TWU

mission trips to Kenya & India

Bible school in Australia

internship in New York City

sailing in Greece

sister’s wedding, brother’s wedding, the birth of my nephew

new friendships

bad haircuts (maybe not a great memory, but a memory nonetheless)

jobs

grad school

hard times, good times, and everything in between

My twenties have been good. Many things about me have changed, whether it be my looks, my perspectives, or my heart. I have made mistakes and learned from them. I have experienced great joy and so much laughter. The last decade has not been perfect, but I wouldn’t change it because it has made me who I am now.

The thought of being 30 scares me a little, but the one thing that helps me embrace it, is knowing that God is continuing to work in me and He is changing me to be more like Him. I am excited to see where He will take me in the next decade and in the year ahead.

So to my twenties I say, farewell. And to my thirties I say, the best is yet to come!

Contradiction

I feel like I’m in the middle of a contradiction. I feel tension in every area of my life. My life is full and busy and my mind is constantly working, yet I feel like I don’t have time to process all that is going on in my head and in my heart.

I am learning so much as I read and write and dialogue about the problems that exist in our world today. I feel the weight of responsibility, but don’t really know how I should respond.

I want to love God and love people, but have yet to grasp or recognize what God’s calling is for me.

Some moments I feel hopeless and other times I feel inspired.

I feel like my weaknesses are slapping me in the face and I am reminded how desperately I need God.

I am overcome with doubt, when all I really want to do is hope.

I have more questions than answers.

Everything that has become normal is feeling foreign.

The process is overwhelming, but is  proving to be rewarding.

I am trying to resolve my contradiction, but as Parker J. Palmer (1980) stated:

Our first need is not to release the tension, but to live the contradictions, fully and painfully aware of the poles between which our lives are stretched. As we do so, we will be plunged into paradox, at the center of which we will find transcendence and new life. Our lives will be changed. Both our beliefs and our actions will become more responsive to God’s spirit. But this will happen only as we allow ourselves to be engulfed by contradictions which God alone can resolve. With Jonah, we will be delivered. But first we will be swallowed into darkness.

Right now I’m being swallowed into darkness, but I know its not the end. As I live the contradiction, I am gaining a better understanding of what it really means to be a follower of Jesus.