A New Year...A Clean Slate!

For those of you who know me well, I'm pretty sure that you know the side of me that gets sentimental and contemplative...and wordy.
A brand new year brings out this side of me faster than any other I can think of! So if you are in a hurry or don't really want to read another "Long Boring Book, by Sheila", you can quit right now (I will never know).

I usually spend the week between Christmas and New Year, sleeping in, de-Christmas-ing the house, being with family, and contemplating the year behind me, as well as the year ahead.

I like to think that I make the most of each year, and "squeeze it for all it is worth."
The other part of me knows that many years have come and gone, and I have not lived up to my full potential. I have spent years wrapped up in the very things that Christ came to free me from. Living bound and a prisoner to selfishness, anger, bitterness, guilt....

This year, 2007, has been one of inward searching and longing for my life to be about much more than "me". I am finding out that most of us women long for our lives to be about something eternal. We want to make a mark on the world. What we are searching for is simply one thing...significance! We go to a lot of work and sometimes, years of heartache, hoping that someone will finally notice, and give us a smidgen of credit or validation.
What I learned is that I have been spending too much of my time hoping others notice me and what I do, and too little time concerned about what Christ sees in me. "Oh, God forgive me!!"

This morning in our worship at Boise First, Pastor Darrell had us bow our heads in prayer, then to hold our hands in the shape of a bowl. He then asked us to mentally fill that bowl with all the things from this last year that we are not proud of. The bad attitudes and sins that fill us and keep us from being useful in God's kingdom; anger that corrupts and consumes us....then Pastor Darrell asked us to open our hands and release the things in our bowl to God.
We then were encouraged to make another bowl, and to ask Christ to fill it with His grace, His mercy, His forgiveness, His love and His peace....for a brand new year!
This time was so powerful for me today! It reminded me of the words to "Great Is Thy Faithfulness...morning by morning, new mercies I see..."
In that moment, I pleaded with God to take it all and to make my bowl a vessel that He can purify and use for His purpose and will.

I have many things that I want to do in the coming year. I have grand plans to do things better, get caught up on my scrapbooks, be a better wife and mom, journal more, get all of my recipes organized, teach my children to do laundry....but more than all of those, I so long be in deeper relationship with Christ.
I must quit "doing" and spend more time "being. " Being a lover of the Word, being in communion with Christ all throughout my day, being a searcher, being a servant, being a follower...simply being...in Him!

My prayer is that through the act of being, I will find true significance in Christ. Knowing that He created me simply for His pleasure. Isn't that such an amazing thought!!

My Bible verse that I am claiming for this coming year is:
Philippians 1: 9-11
"And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God."

Happy New Year!
Sheila

P.S. The part about teaching my children to do laundry...I am really serious! Much to their agony, they will be doing their own laundry very soon, or I will have to go on strike!
I can just hear my grandma..."Oh, dear, you don't know how good you've got it! I used to do laundry for all nine of us on an old washboard, with lye soap...then I had to hang it all, and then iron it...."
So, my response to her would be, "Grandma, I am so proud of you, but obviously, you were a much better, stronger woman that I am, and I must have help!!!"
I also intend for each of my children to leave home knowing how to do laundry, cook a decent meal or two, and keep a clean house! So this is just a mom taking a step in the right direction!