Photo Credit: © 2006 Lynne Holder

Thursday, December 31, 2015

365 Blank Pages

The calendar says December 31, but while people are preparing for New Year celebrations, we wonder what is going to be new about 2016. While others go out to parties or celebrate with happy anticipation at home, posting their pictures to social media, Leland and I find ourselves with no money, and from a strictly financial perspective, struggling to find anything to celebrate after another difficult year in business. 

The videos we've all seen of a person standing stationary while the world around them speeds by in hyper motion is how we feel. Everywhere we go it seems we are in some parallel universe watching as people load their late model cars with new furniture, TVs, Kitchen Aid mixers, cases of wine--and we walk slowly by; detached, observing.

Stuff, I remind myself. There is no material thing here on Earth that is of eternal value

Then why does my heart hurt? Why does my whole body feel this burning question, 

If not this, then what else? 

That famous quote by C. S. Lewis comes to mind, If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

But I am here, in the physical, not there. For now, I continue my journey as a soul walking about in a flesh and blood vessel. I search once again for purpose and doing things in the years that I continue on Earth that have meaning, as those years of raising my family had. 

Family. My heart continues to live in two places...here at home, and 275 miles away in a lovely city in North Carolina. Every time I visit, that feeling of detachment disappears. 

How the littles have already changed, just since my 59th birthday celebration in August!

Yes, I always go off onto this rabbit trail and have to talk about my people. That's a good thing because it reminds me of the things I DO celebrate. This crew!

The difficult part of moving into a new year for us is facing the great unknown. So many "ifs" that my head spins. There aren't any details right now, but when I see the image below, it awakens a sense of adventure in me that I thought was long gone. 


I visualize 365 blank pages and I pray for God to be the Author of an amazing new story. Send us somewhere, keep us here, revive our business, shut it down and give us other means of making a living, give us to missions and let us journal in photographs. Head spinning stuff, for sure.

Detachment from the shiny distractions of this life was the only way I could have come to this mindset. As I look back over the losses, life-changing events, and waiting that have led to surrender in my 60th year, I think of the song, Nothing Is Wasted, by Jason Gray.



We are your servants, Lord. You write our 2016 story on those blank pages--all for your honor and glory.

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