-My Favorite Highway lyrics
December is helping me remember the place that my heart has called its home. It does that for most of us. The presence of Christmas evokes warmth, happiness, and fuzzy feelings. It reminds of us family, and the importance of keeping a warm heart. Most of us would say that at Christmas, our heart feels at home.
December reminds me of where my heart has called home, too. Last year's December started a new phase of life for me. The past year has been a redefinition. I am a radically different person, but I haven't forgotten where my heart has been. The place my heart has called home isn't a place like Christmas. I look back and realize that my heart's home - its usual dwelling place - was not one characterized by warmth or rosiness. My heart isn't used to the peace and stillness that I have found over this past year.
(Spoiler alert: I'm about to get quite sappy and nostalgic.)
This month precipitates a flood of memories from the past few years. But it isn't a reminiscence of rosy memories. The month brings back memories of an idealistic, ashamed, and fearful girl teetering on the edge of the thin wall that separates darkness from light. And in a way, it's so weird to see past-me like that. It's odd to look back, from a perspective of hope, and see my proximity to disbelief, despair, fear. My proximity to ignorance.
I was ignorant of a lot of things, like responsibility, and wisdom. But I was mostly ignorant of hope.
I didn't realize, or respect, the fact that hope was bought for me. I just didn't see it. I saw my life as a residual buildup of my mistakes. I mean, imagine the story of your past without the sovereignty of God woven into it. Imagine your past without God's provision. That's how I saw myself. That's how I saw hope.
I guess I never really saw anything. I was fearfully wide-eyed but despicably blind. I was incredulous of hope and yet ignorant of the same. I never really thought that I was beyond hope; I never thought God was distant; but I never realized hope's presence either. I teetered on the edge for quite a while, even after I first encountered Christ. Maybe you teetered too. Maybe you even traveled through some ruins; I did. Maybe you know what it feels like to break into a lot of pieces, and then scoop them up into what you think resembles a functional person.
That's what my heart has known. Until this year, that's where my heart called its home. Not a rosy Christmas-y warmth, really.
This past year should've been the hardest year of my life. My parent's separation, my job at Chick-fil-A, becoming an adult, paying my own bills and paving my own way. It should've been a tumultuous year. Probably more tumultuous than any year I've ever known.
But you know what? It hasn't been.
This year has been sanctifying. And that has made it beautiful. It's fed me endless new perspectives, thoughts, ideas, emotions, dreams. It's taken me through staggering, winding roads and plateaued in curious places. The large majority of this year has just had a lot of pluck. It's been tricky to navigate. But it's shattered my ignorance. It's shattered my expectations, my pride, my immaturity. It showed me the value in trusting on the sovereignty of my Creator.
This crazy year has been used to sanctify me, but it has also brought clarity. It expanded my mind and my soul, and brought a hearty breadth to my relationship with my God. I haven't known trust until now. Trust, in that I'm literally okay with whatever happens because I trust his purposes in it all. And I used to call that crazy.
But you know what else I would've called crazy? This year being the one used to redefine me. I never would have predicted it. I never would have predicted that this would be the year that I grow the closest with my family. The year that I get a wonderful job. The year that I find myself inexpressibly happy. The year that I fall in love. The year that I learn to candidly trust my God.
I would've considered that possibility preposterous. But God didn't. And his goodness, even amidst the craziness, has given me full faith in his sovereignty. That's the place that my heart now calls home.
Merry Christmas. I hope that, whatever your heart calls its home, it is a place graced with the breath of God.
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