Making Time for Reflection

Every new year is filled with time spent reflecting on the past and dreaming for the future. It’s an opportunity to celebrate, mourn, and learn from the previous twelve months and walk into a new year hopefully a little better than we entered the previous one.

So, in the spirit of looking back on the year 2019, I want to revisit the top 5 posts of last year. Join me!

The Social Media Post that Shook me to my Core

While social media provides us an opportunity to connect with others like we’ve never been able to before, I wonder if it really is as good as we like to think it is.

The other day, as I was scrolling on Instagram, I saw a post that said: “Men are trash”. At that moment, my heart broke. So many people had liked this post and the comments were filled with words about female empowerment and more messages of “yass girl” than I could count.

And my heart broke. Read more.

Are You Happy?

I work with a girl who is a free spirit through and through who loves the Lord with all of her heart. She’ll get this look in her eye and you know that she’s just gotten a download from the Lord. It’s so cool!

Sometimes she’ll just look at me and ask a simple “are you happy?”, a question that always catches me off-guard.

I don’t usually think about happiness. In fact, it almost never crosses my mind. It’s so far from my primary concern that I never know how to react when she poses the question. But I’ve come to appreciate her asking. Read more. 

Proverbs 30: Living a Legacy

The truth is that day by day we’re building a legacy. We’re compiling attitudes, words, projects, products, relationships, worldviews, and more that influence how we interact with the world around us. The things we say, the time we invest in others, the works we create, and the way we live will outlast us, even though we often forget this important fact.

Every day we’re presented with the opportunity to build something that’s going to outlast us, the question is: what legacy are you leaving? Read more.

A Delay Isn’t a Failure

I wanted to launch my next book back in October 2018. I released my first devotional, His Story, in October 2017, so October 2018 just felt right.

I was pushing and working and, honestly, I was getting nowhere fast. I knew in the back of my mind that I wasn’t going to be able to make the October deadline, but I didn’t want to accept it. I had decided that I needed to release a new devotional each year; if I didn’t meet this deadline, what was I going to do? What would that say about me?

I pushed the release date back to January 2019.

But then I missed that deadline too. I beat myself up with each delay; this wasn’t my perfect plan for releasing this devotional.

Each delay wasn’t a failure, but a necessary learning experience. Read more.

Though it was later than my intended timeline, I did release a devotional in 2019 and, honestly, I’m so glad that I waited as long as I did. It’s available on Amazon now.

Err on the Side of Grace

The church as a whole has mistakenly taken grace to mean approval. If we’re gracious to the drug addict, we’re encouraging that behavior. If we are kind to the woman who’s thinking about an abortion, we’re saying that we agree with her life choice. If we love the person who hurt us, we’re saying that they can do it again.

But none of that is true.

We make grace and love unnecessarily complicated. Read more. 

 

2019 was quite the year! There were many ups and downs but, through it all, God continued to reveal his goodness to me. I’m excited and expectant for what 2020 holds!

What did you learn in 2019?

What are you looking forward to in 2020?

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