A Time for Everything

Each New Year’s Eves many people start reflecting on resolutions and the question “how do I want my life to be different one year from now?” As my birthday approaches this year, I am doing the same kind of reflecting and find myself in an odd place. For the first time, I am in the midst of achieving what I hoped, wished and dreamed for as a goal for “this time next year I want to be…”.

Most of my adult life I have made it a resolution on New Year’s and my birthday to “be healthy physically” which included to lose weight, eat healthy and exercise. I am realizing the expression I always heard that “with age comes wisdom” has validity to it. The lessons we learn along the way in life really do serve as a road map for us to grow, change and become wiser. The mistakes and missteps I have made through the years with my health are a part of life.

I was praying about my upcoming birthday and concluded that it is ok that this is the time that I am finally making the dream of good physical health a reality. In prayer I turned to one of my favorite scriptures.

There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens. A time to give birth, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to uproot the plant. A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to tear down, and a time to build. A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance. A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather them; a time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces. A time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away. A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to be silent, and a time to speak. A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

These verses are so comforting and help me realize that there is a time and a season for all that happens in our life. In 2005 I read the book Rhythm of Life by Matthew Kelly and it made such an impact on me. From this book I learned that our essential purpose is to become the best version of ourselves. God wants our future to be bigger than our past. I recommend reading the book. There are so many great nuggets I want to share with you from the book that I could end up writing multiple pages. One of the excerpts that has resonated with me 15 years after reading the book is, “A hundred and fifty years ago, Henry David Thoreau left Concord, Massachusetts, because he believed it had become too noisy, too distracting, and too busy. He went off to Walden Pond to reconnect with himself and with nature. It took him only seven pages in his writings and reflections to conclude, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” During my short life, I have had the privilege of traveling in more than fifty countries, and I have seen nothing to make me believe that Thoreau would change his mind today. Most people are not thriving; most people are just surviving, just getting by, just hanging on. It is, in fact, a rare and pleasant surprise to find someone who is truly thriving.”

In the middle of the Coronavirus pandemic, with all the uncertainty swirling around our world, I choose to thrive. I choose to live a life of meaning and not one of quiet desperation. I choose to have faith and hope in God who is bigger than any problem and who has an appointed time for everything.

How do you want your life to be different one year from now?