The year is here. 2014.

The year I graduate from college, bringing with it so many new realities.

New year. New choices, new lessons, new opportunities, new interruptions, new possibilities, new realities. Hallelujah – for a Hope through it all.

My resolution and heart-focus for this year is to learn the art of waiting, a heart of patience. I have this great sense of God teaching me how to wait. But it may not be wait by it’s normal definition. I sense a teaching of how to wait well. How to wait to speak, how to wait before I express myself, how to wait before I react or respond to a circumstance. Patience in speech, in expression, in heart and soul releasing. Patience in action, patience in preparing for the future even. God has done so much in my life this past year, so much pulling together, so much teaching and chiseling, so much pursuing me in love and grace.

I have some waiting and prayerful anticipation in front of me, choices and new experiences that are going to need the wisdom and peace and leading of the Holy Spirit. I want to walk these new days with Jesus. I have so much emotion inside me, so much growing love, so much desire and so much hope, some fear, and some uncertainty, even some doubt. I need God to help me live mercy and hope amidst these raw emotions.

All in God’s timing… His working out of particular details of my life: my relationship with John, the job I end up getting after graduation, where I end up living after graduation, my final semester! and I want to wait well. I want to give God the space to work, the opportunity to lead, even the most mundane of emotional reactions or conscious thoughts. To wait and gather and glean all that He has for me during this time. I believe God is going to use this word — wait — as a gentle reminder to assure me that He is not done. He has only begun to pull even more things together in my life (and your life), for His glory and His purposes, and for our good.

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