End of the beginning

2023 New Years Eve.

As I sit on Bell’s Beach in Australia listening to the waves crash, surfers waiting to catch their next wave and the occasional passing beach wander, I reflect on this year. It was an unexpected destination today. Some of this year was like that too.

The deep background roar behind the waves brings a calm within me, that I have missed and have needed reminding of, more than I have had the opportunity to experience in the last couple of years.

2023 has been a time of adding new life stuff and too many challenges on top of the already long list that doesn’t seem to see resolution once again. I find myself being more tired than ever in the unknown and have no vision like my Creator God’s over the what next. I know he’s watching and walking the train wreck with me. But what next?

All I know is I need rest.

Rest from the heart stuff.

Rest from the health stuff

Rest from stuff God is yet to reveal.

Rest from the stuff that God’s yet to heal.

Finishing 2023 with a glass half filled attitude was a good place for me to be, even if it didn’t feel true, I was holding onto the positive and the gratefulness it gave me as tired and as restless as I am.

Regardless, I know I need rest from my imperfections and brokenness playing in my head and my heart. The thoughts that take up too much real estate in my mind and that the enemy tries to muster his own ways into the heaviness, I too have no energy to carry. His twisting of words, actions and innocuous moments into heart breaking pain. It is exhausting. I am exhausted.

2024 I look to you as a place of refuge for all the possibilities and hope that you can bring and fulfil. Only God knows what it will bring. He also knows what I will need. And he, like in all the days of my life I have already walked, he will carry the load that I can’t. The days that I struggle, the moments of human mistakes, unkind words and behaviours that are not a testimony to the gift of salvation I have in Jesus. He will walk in the times of struggle and in the times of great joy and in all the complexities that humanity has created and tried to create in its own image. God will reveal his truth in each situation and bring healing, hope and protection for all the days of 2024.

2023, you were difficult, unkind and gracious and glorious in all your beautiful turmoil. 2024, if all I see changed in my life is my better understanding of how good God is and how steadfast, faithful and how in love with me he is, then 2024, you will be enough. At least this is what I want it to be like. I hope and pray you surprise me and grow me in ways that are kind and fulfilling and answers to prayers I’ve long ago stopped expecting answers to. But I’ve known God’s all over them, even in my silence.

Father, protector, provider, lover of my soul, thank you for the year that has been, in all its heartbreaking ugliness that walked alongside all of its beauty and wonder. I pray 2024 will be a kinder year that continues to show me just how good you are, all the time. My words are but the tip of the iceberg of how hard this year was, but you were not surprised by any of it and I am so thankful for this and for you. May my eyes and ears be opened, your spirit refreshed within me, and my heart and mind brought closer to knowing your continued guidance and fullness only found in you. I trust you and put my hope in you.

In Jesus name Amen