I was keenly aware of yesterday’s stint at the storage locker every time I tried to use my legs and arms today. I don’t think I ever fully appreciated just how many times we use our legs and arms in a day. Many, many times. Needless to say, I didn’t get a whole lot done today.

I brought home several old journals last night and spent a lot of time reading my thoughts and prayers of yesteryear and reflecting. The last two years have been trying in ways I had actually forgotten. Starting in December of 2006, finishing up my first semester back in school full time and welcoming my brother home from Thailand (sans son and wife due to numerous circumstances beyond his control), each new happening was increasingly difficult, leading up to the cataclysmic (to us) pregnancy and loss last fall. A week to the day after that, my Nana died. The next month our car was stolen. Both of us were still in school and Ishi worked full time. It was hard to read my words of those days – I didn’t rail at God in anger or demand to know why these things were happening – I begged God to forgive me for not being more grateful for what I still had.

In a way, the woman I was when I was at my most wretched was better behaved than the one I am now. She serves as a better example to those who mourn than the woman I am now that I am just a few weeks past the worst of it all. It’s stunning to me how fortune separates us from God! What are we to make of this; that at our darkest, grief-stained hour we are somehow most able to meet God in the way we should?

Or of this; that God, in His darkest, bloodiest, most agonizing hour on earth, met us as completely as He ever could?

Tonight’s the night! I decided to write this all out and then wait for the little “connected” icon to show up. Hah! The smarts, I has them!

Okay. We (well I, but I’m taking you along for the ride) have begun to consider Don Whitney’s Ten Questions for the New Year. I was going to do one a day, but I might revisit that timeline. They are very good questions, and, in the spirit of very good questions, they demand a fair amount of prayerful consideration. So! Withough further do, the first question:

What’s one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?

I struggled with this question for hours. I had some great answers spring to mind immediately, but upon reading the question a bit closer, the word “enjoyment” popped off the page.

Enjoyment?

I enjoy so much in this world. Great food, laughing till I leak, pulling an all nighter on a programming project, the well-turned phrase, taking photographs, my husband’s goofy nature, hours-long conversations with my beloved parents… the list could circle the moon.

But God? Enjoyment? I must admit I’ve never considered whether I was enjoying God or not. My focus is always on whether I’m pleasing God. Whether I’m doing what God wants, whether I’m adhering to God’s will or being stubborn about getting my own way. I can honestly say I have woken up in the middle of the night in agony, worried about whether I’m truly a good servant to our Lord. It is literally one of the most important things in my life. I care about these things because I love God so very, very much.

I love God with to the point of breathlessness, to the point of tears streaming down my face. During worship, I used to be so embarrassed at how teary-eyed I’d get during those beautiful hymns, prayers and sermons. Every Sunday that I go to church, I pause before I put on makeup, wondering if it’s worth it when I just know that somewhere between the Agnus Dei and the Nunc Dimittis, it will be a soggy smear on a kleenex in my hand. But I’m not embarrassed anymore. God’s presence chokes me up. It’s a powerful thing, and far from being shy about it, I now feel grateful for how bare and exposed my heart has become in front of Him, that I am so easily reduced to humility and tears of gladness at His beauty and love.

But all of that is more of a gut response to Him rather than enjoyment. I love God deeply, desire to serve God intensely. So where is this enjoyment? I have to say, the idea baffles me and I can see how that signals a lack of something in my relationship with our Father.

Therefore, for this year, the answer to this question would have to be: “Reflect on and pray about God’s desire for us to enjoy him, that I might understand how to do so.”

re·a·lign (r-ln)
tr.v. re·a·ligned, re·a·lign·ing, re·a·ligns
1. To put back into proper order or alignment.
2. To make new groupings of or working arrangements between.^[1]

Somewhere along one of the many paths I’ve gone down on my internet travels, I came across an article written by Don Whitney called Ten Questions for the New Year, in which he says:

The beginning of a new year is an ideal time to stop, look up, and get our bearings. To that end, here are some questions to ask prayerfully in the presence of God.

My Dad works with engineers who work on those gigantic oil tankers which do such stunning things that I often can’t help but think deep down that it must just be magic. Their complexities and the sheer size of the jobs they perform^[2] exceed my abilities to understand. But listening to my Dad talk about his work is one of my favourite things to do. His understanding of these huge vessels and their systems is astonishing and, remarkably, it is inspiring.

Having been privy to a great many conversations along such lines has given me, osmotically, an appreciation for the way the movements of the massive often depend utterly on the precision and reliability of the very, very small.

A missing ball bearing or an instrument out of alignment can grind the most immense projects to a halt, at staggering costs. When you think about it, is it any different when it comes to our own hearts, thoughts, lives and the effect they can have on God’s vast plans for us? Are we misaligned with His glorious and loving Spirit? Do we stubbornly insist on grinding away at life with our own rusty ball bearings when God so desires to see us glide in God’s joy?

January is a fresh start… and fresh starts are why God invented mornings and years. He must have known we would need a reset button. Something to get us excited about our lives again when it starts to feel like we’re just treading water. A chance to pull off the road and take advantage of a much needed pit stop. Rotate, recalibrate, realign. I think Whitney’s questions are a good way to get the year off to a beautiful start, so in lieu of resolutions, I’ll be reflecting on one of these questions every day and sharing my answers to them with you here.

I was going to post this last night and do the first question today, but you saw how my computers (both of them, even) were being putzes. And as it turns out, the timing is even better because today I had a three-hour conversation with my Mom that really helped shift something deep inside me – a veil had fallen over my face when I lost my unborn son and it muted my vision of our Lord’s glory and amazing love. I felt I couldn’t get a clear feeling of Him. Prayer and worship felt strained. It was very painful and I was beginning to feel a bit abandoned.

But the flood opened up over me again today and my heart opened like a bud under the sun. My mourning veil has been gently lifted and brushed aside. It’s time to stand up and realign my steps with those on the sand beside me. It’s time to get back on the road to being exactly who God is shaping me to be. We have wonderful, wonderful work to do!

1. From the Free Online Dictionary [↩]
2. If you want to read about what these things do, Wikipedia has an excellent article on FPSOs and how they work. [↩]

We went to a worship retreat last October (oh, had we only known what fires we would pass through before a year had passed!) at Crescent Beach. The worship service early Sunday morning on the beach was so cold, the air so clean. Our lips had trouble forming the words to the hymns and prayers, but our hearts lifted with the flight of the seabirds above. Looking out over the water, watching the sun rise, both of us were struck by the realization that the Creator to whom we sang that morning had formed and spoken everything around us into being… including us. Within the year, we would feel His creative force in an entirely new way – and experience the wrenching pain of the death that is sin’s stain this world.

My unborn son died, but every morning our sun rises. God’s Son died too, and has risen to be at His right side always. Light and dark. Everlife and sin. We taste it all.

And rejoice.