On the first of May, I crossed the daunting threshold of 40. If you know me, you know I love my birthdays. Growing up, my mother made sure we felt celebrated on our day. It didn’t matter whether she had money. A cupcake, a tub of icecream and plenty love always made the day special. Gifts were extra.
But in the weeks preceding this milestone year, there wasn’t the usual countdown or excitement. To be transparent, I got sucked into the ingratitude rabbit hole when I started to think about all the things I thought I would have by now. I actually contemplated not celebrating because I couldn’t do it as big and luxurious as I hoped at “this age”. The root of that depression or funk was comparison. The Word and a couple friends slapped me straight.
The truth is, God has been convicting me about my definition of winning. His expectation is that we run the race set before us, not the one set for the next person. I grew up with the expectation that life would be a straight line; go to school, get a job, get married, buy a house and live happily ever after. Adulthood shakes that perception on the surface really quickly. And for me the events of December 2015 threw my life in such a tailspin, I still sometimes feel unbalanced by it. Deep inside, I long to get back on track to check off a list.
The question reverberating in my spirit is what if God’s plan is totally different from my own. I have been trying to unlearn my traditional views about what a successful life looks like. I remember countless prophesies that declare how much purpose has been tucked inside of me, waiting for revelation. A recent sermon series has me reflecting on Joseph. God foretold his purpose in a dream as a child and gave no clues about how it would come to be. Reading his story in a few chapters, if we don’t look deep enough, hides the fact that Joseph was 17 when he first dreamt of leadership. He was presumably almost 40 when his dream comes to pass. Between then, most of us know the story; betrayal, slavery, false imprisonment and forgotten – so not a straight line.
Yet God in His Omniscience is able to weave every part of Joseph’s story, mine and yours into a purpose filled tail of redemption, healing and victory. My goal is to be able to declare like Paul “Yet all of the accomplishments that I once took credit for, I’ve now forsaken them and I regard it all as nothing compared to the delight of experiencing Jesus Christ as my Lord! To truly know him meant letting go of everything from my past and throwing all my boasting on the garbage heap. It’s all like a pile of manure to me now, so that I may be enriched in the reality of knowing Jesus Christ and embrace him as Lord in all of his greatness.” Philippians 3:7-8 TP
In the meantime, I’m enjoying a perspective shift and embracing of a new freedom. My race is my own. I am my only competition and God truly is the Author and Finisher of my faith. What He started in me, He will finish. The path may be riddled with stuff I don’t like, painful, excruciating even but I don’t have to worry. God is fully in control.
Write Fully Yours
Lady Kavan
Very timely for me.