Blank Slate - New Year Contemplations

Collected thoughts.
Thoughts collected, pulled together.
Miscellaneous wanderings, hodgepodge at best.

Tinged with sadness are thoughts of a season, all kinds of seasons, gone once again - not because those seasons are over but because of opportunities missed.
Will a season ever end with a sense of "Wow - I did that right"? There are often things I'm pleased with, but a closer observation reveals selfishness, disregard, hurried and busy, or overly consumed and non-observant.

Longing for simplicity. Mostly simplicity of schedule. Routine.
Ah, but I know my frame.
I tire of routine! I gain it, enjoy it, and cast it off. Too impetuous. Too ambitious for other things.
It is a gift. It is a down-falling.
It inspires. It leads astray.
To learn how to lend it wisely, constrain when appropriate, unleash when others need it, hold back when the benefit would be solely mine - and not always beneficial in the end for any.

To not long for what is another's portion, and to be glad for what is mine.
To recognize a gift on display and find delight in it without feeling condemnation for not attaining that myself.
To know my boundaries, my limitations, my talents, my gifts. To use them all, accept them all and still look to grow beyond what I am now, trusting Him as growth unfolds.

Knowing Him more and more. Finding Him in every season, around every bend. Understanding and experiencing fullness of joy because of His very presence in my life, in each and every single instance.
To rejoice ALWAYS and in ALL things. This is His will, in this season, in the past season, in the seasons yet to come. Because He is my Lord. That is why.

The New Year holds much. Above all may it hold much of Him in me, through me, and to me. Amen.