You know as the calendar year ends, I reflect over the past year and years. I love remembering. As different people post different comments, saluting 2010 or biding it adieu in anticipation of the year to come, I had a thought. Some view 2010 as the best year of their lives. Others hope 2011 will be the best year of their life. And still others, think the best year of their life happened a long, long time ago. I wonder where I am at in the core of my being, because I know where I want to be in my head and heart.
My favorite year of life in my head was probably when I was 17: finished high school, started college, lived amongst amazing people, realized the extent of my sinfulness, and just lived life to the fullest while studying something I loved. In retrospect, life was simple. Hard at times. Yet simple.
The worst year of my life in my head was my senior year in college. After moving off campus, away from the people I had spent the last three years with, I plummeted into moderate depression, as I realized that I was a giver in my friendships and I didn't have many giving friends once I stopped putting forth the effort. It has taken the last 7 years to work through some of the repercussions of that year. My heart had been hardened to intimate friendships because of a perceived lack of care from those around me and therefore, my efforts to maintain or deepen friendships became almost non-existent. For that, I apologize to those who have felt my lack of care over the past years; my God continually redeems me from my independent apathy towards friends.
But as I read something that a friend of mine wrote, "2011 is going to be the best year of my life," I wondered if I was reading it correctly. I think I have since realized that I did not read it correctly at first, but off of that first impression comes my thoughts. My first thought was, "How sad, what do you have to look forward to after this coming year, if you think this will be the best year of your life?" Now, what I think she was saying is that she is expecting this next year to be the best year of her life up until this point. And then she will look forward to the next one too. My incorrect interpretation of her statement at first though led me to wonder, how many people are living in the past or way too far in the future, that they are missing out on the very best that God has for them now.
This in turn has led me to the quote at the beginning of this post.
What is God's best? And what is it going to take to have His best?
As a woman, I have hit all the major, "I can't wait until..." moments. You know, the times in life as a little girl when you say you can't wait until you grow up, you get married, you have a child and become a mama. I've done all those things. What else do I have to look forward to now? Seriously, what is the next step in life that I want to come so fast like I did for marriage and children? There isn't one. I do not look so far ahead with such yearning anymore. I do not think, "Oh, I can't wait until my kids are grown and gone," or "I can't wait to be a grandmother." Nope. The much anticipated steps in life have passed me by. I will still hit other milestones, the birth of our second child in March, and then our subsequent children, the beginning of the redemptive process with our children, our first house, job changes, possible moves, etc. But none of those hold the anticipation of my earlier years. And you know what? I am good with that. Do you know why? It is because I believe that God has me here and now for a reason. The days to come will come, but today will be gone in 11 hours. If I dwell too much on the past or look too far ahead, I am going to miss what God has for me on this day, December 31st in the year 2010. I don't want to miss life.
But, this does lead back into living like God's best for us is yet to come. I love the above quote, because I think there are times that I just blatantly trust God and yet I still know that His ways and means to reach His best are not the same as I would use. I've experienced lots of pain and lots of joy in this life so far. I read about the lives of other people, I watch the lives of those around me, I look at history and I look at His Story and realize that God's best generally involves pain. So is this next year going to be the best year of my life so far? And does that mean it's going to be painful? I believe the answer to both is a resounding "yes!"
From what I have gathered, C.S. Lewis wrote this quote in a letter to a dear friend of his whose wife was dying. I think soon before Lewis' own wife had died. The full quote is this,
"Indeed, indeed we both will. I don't see how any degree of faith can exclude the dismay, since Christ's faith did not save Him from dismay in Gethsemane. We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us: we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be."
My interpretation of the first line is that Lewis is certain that both he and his friend would make it through this hard time still believing God, "indeed, we both will." And then he draws from the truth of Yeshua's life, even as the Author and Perfecter of faith, Yeshua was not exempt from a dreadfully painful life and death! If the faith of all faiths led to God's best through pain, then why would my little mustard seed faith not also lead to God's best through pain? And therefore, I expect this coming year to be God's best. Some of that I'm convinced will be full of joy and pleasure. But there are times, I do wonder, how painful God's best is going to be? It scares me a little; but just a little, because I fully believe that life with God is far more enjoyable and satisfying than life without Him. And I look forward to the upcoming years with those of you who are around me now, because I cannot do life without you! I don't even want to try. Happy New Year!
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