28

"You have made known to me the path of life... in your presence is fullness of joy." (Psalm 116:11)

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For the past seven days, I have been 28 years old. (I digress... how strange of a sentence that was to write.) Although a billion people have entered, traversed, and known this same year before I have even reached it, I am still every bit a pioneer - having just now taken my farthest step yet into this mysterious land called age. And everyone is always in this same predicament - we step further and further into this unknown, taking comfort from other's experiences and advice, and praying to a God who holds our future in His hands (Jeremiah 29:11).

As a 28-year-old pioneer, I am grateful for the wisdom of those who have walked this stretch of the road before me - and this particular blog is dedicated to just one of those bits of wisdom spoken (many times) over me, by my dad. Simple words of wisdom that have stuck with me during recent years - often administering themselves upon moments in the form of advice, and just as often as comfort. The words are quite simply: "Live your life." 

I have high hopes for my 28th year... more than I have ever pondered on a New Years Eve, I have been thinking this past week about what I would like to do differently this year. There are a few things I would like to  accomplish, internally and externally - things regarding my fitness, my relationships, my walk, my marriage, etc... but all of those things pale in comparison to my desire to more fully accomplish what that phrase means - live your life. 

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I woke up this morning to a completely free, blissfully vacant Saturday. Other than getting air put into one of my tires, there was nothing on my agenda... there was no agenda. No alarms went off to wake me, for I had no place to be. Still laying in bed underneath the cocoon of covers, I began to mentally formulate a dream of what I would like my Saturday to be. Of course there would be coffee... and then perhaps a trip to the library to get some new books... and maybe I would wear a fun winter scarf around my neck and smile at everyone I meet, because it is just so lovely of a day... there may even be skipping involved. No bed-head, no pillow creases across my face, no headache or backache from sleeping in a wrong position... no reason to be insecure, no reason to be fearful, no reason at all to be anything less than happy. It was quite simply put, a 'found my keys immediately, hello sunshine, goodbye sorrow, i am woman - hear me roar' kind of morning.

However... wait for it... here comes the contrast.

Even at my happiest, on my way to get my tire fixed, I caught myself thinking the following:

What if my tire completely blows on the way there, and I am stranded because Tim is gone? I wonder how far I could walk with these shoes on, if necessary? And what do I do when I arrive, if I arrive, and which door should I go in? Where should I park, and who do I talk to? How long will this take? I think my phone may die. What if they try to sell me something, and I don't know what to say? And then once the tire was successfully fixed, and I was elatedly on my way to the library (my favorite place in the entire world) I caught myself fretting about some random schedule conflict that had come to my attention while I was waiting on the tire to be fixed, and that needed to be addressed immediately.

And then I pulled up to Starbucks to get my coffee, loaded with an armful of books, and I actually caught myself fretting about whether or not there would be a table inside, or whether my entire plan of sitting and reading would be foiled by some innocuous, yet entirely less-entitled person than myself taking their seat at the last existing table...

Midway across the parking lot, this truth whispered through my mind..."God has not given us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power, of love, and of self-discipline." (2 Timothy 1:7) Conviction. Right there in the Starbucks parking lot, arms laden with pages and pages of hard-covered bliss, taste-buds anticipating the imminence of iced coffee... God has not given us a spirit of fear. So what in the world am I anxious about right now... seriously - was I actually just fearing the non-availability of a physical, temporal, inanimate object like a table? 

And even more convicting, the answer to that question... yes, I was actually fearing the non-availability of a physical, temporal, inanimate object - such as a table. I was fearing the lack of security that table would offer me, and I was fearing the pitiful way people might look at me once they would see that my intentions of sitting and reading had been foiled, while I would stand awkwardly by the bar, wondering what to do next, looking like a sad puppy who just had its toy taken away... yes, I was actually fearing all of that.

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My fellow pioneer friends, I will share with you something that I am learning about myself at the ripe old age of 28... these little, "harmless" moments of worry are the very things that most often keep me from living my life. All the 'shoulds' and 'coulds', the 'what ifs' and 'hows'. They keep me chained. These silly things that are so pitifully human are the worrisome details and mindless frettings that keep me from trusting God, in the fullest way that He intended.

I have this obsession with the right process of things... the order of things, the semblance of things, the explanation of things... what should Lauren be doing, and why, and how? I'm confessing this - that all this effort to do the right thing all the time often keeps me entirely too introspective, during the moments when I should be engaging with God and figuring out who He is, how He works, and what He thinks. As David said in one of his psalms: "You have made known to me the path of life... in your presence is fullness of joy." (Psalm 116:11) That's it. That's the only path I need to find, the only process that matters at all. All the other 'shoulds' and 'coulds' begin to disappear from a mind that is fully engaged upon Christ, and fully anchored in the joy of His presence.

Practically speaking... I will be the first to say, I don't understand how it all plays out. It takes a discipline that I am just now beginning to comprehend, to keep my mind occupied with true and certain things, instead of with winsome, yet uncertain things. But all I know, is that I would love to look back in a year, and see that I have grown in this area... to wake up on a Saturday morning with not a care in the world, and be able to embrace freedom a bit more fully than I could one year ago. To not worry as much as I used to, about how certain scenarios would play out, or how I would be perceived... to be a little bit less shackled by myself.

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I am confident that God will help me with this as I continue to seek Him, and I'm excited that He has good things in store. I'm thankful for another year to grow closer to a God who makes me want to live my life better, and shows me how... blow out those candles on the cake, I've made my wish for 28.

... and many more.