2010: Goals & Plans

FYI: This will be a long post! I have a lot to change in the new year:)

Welcome 2010!!! I can't believe a whole decade has gone by! Remember the Y2K scare with everyone stalking up on food and thinking everything was going to go haywire or that the world was going to end just because it was the millennium? Or better yet, remember how in all of those older movies, the 2000's were supposed to be the year where all that futuristic stuff happened? Where's my flying car and oh so fashionable silver space looking outfit??? lol

I brought in the New Year at church with my brother and sister last night. Despite our plans to make it into the main sanctuary, we knew it wasn't going to happen when the line waiting for doors to open wrapped around the building....sigh. Nothing beats the feeling of actually being in the sanctuary during a New Year's service so we were a little disappointed. However, the pastor gave a good sermon. He started the 5 part series called Creating MySpace: Creating Margin in Our Lives. The premise of this series is that we, as a people, live in a world where many of us carry a bigger load than our limit allows (thus not allowing ourselves a margin: the space between our load and our limits). This results in struggles, feelings of depression, frustration,sickness, financial instability, and most of all, putting off things that are most important in our lives (ie: family, friends, ourselves, and even God). He goes on to look at bible passage Mathew 11: 28-30 which says 28"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." This was used to show us 2 important things. First, it shows us that God wants us to 1) Seek Him 2) Serve Him and 3) Be like a student and learn from Him. But more importantly, it shows us what Jesus' yoke is not: a suffocating strain on our lives. WE are the ones who load those yoke's onto our backs. WE are the one's who bare more than we can handle for the sake of not disappointing or better yet, trying to impress or compete with others. But why? For our Lord tells us how He knows our limits and will not give us more than we can handle. So then, why do WE choose to constantly exceed our limits, wear a yoke that Jesus didn't make for us, and then pray to Him and tell Him that He said that He wouldn't give us more than we can bear. Well, yes. But the issue, as my pastor sited, is that He doesn't give us these things. More often than not, we are the ones seeking out the ways to look good and outshine. The reason can be genuine, for example, wanting to give our children a better life than we had or growing up a certain way, and wanting to live completely opposite of that. Well that's fine and all. But, with these choices, we must realize that they are self inflicted, and the burdens that come with them isn't necessarily what God wanted for us, but what we chose for ourselves. We must take responsibility for these things, realize our limits, and pray for God to reveal to us what He doesn't want us to shoulder, and the hardest part, the courage to remove it from our lives.

As I sat listening to this sermon, I thought about the loads in my life and my ever disappearing margin. I've been tired, frustrated, physically sick, and quite frankly, borderline depressed over the life that I've been living over the past year. I feel as though the important things in my life have suffered for the sake of school; something that I have griped about for some time now. So the one and only resolution I have for this year: MAKE TIME FOR THE IMPORTANT THINGS IN MY LIFE!!! and for me, the number one thing is God! My pastor made a good point yesterday, asking how many times does God try to call us and speak to us, but He gets the busy signal? I have been guilty of that and I am not proud of it. So this year I want to resolve to get through the bible in a year, have at least a memory verse a week, have some daily meditation time with Him, and have church time every Sunday (online or actual church; I guess I should add, trying to find a church home in NJ). Also important to me are my family and friends. I truly do love them and I'd like to spend more time with them or at least speak to them some more. Doctor's always tell us how choosing to go through medicine is a sacrifice and that there will be things that we miss and how everyone must understand that, blah blah blah. This is the part of medicine that I do not like and I simply can't be content with. I'm not happy with it now and I never will be. And I am absolutely determined to not let medicine be the thing that separates me from everything that I love. That means God, friends, family, and activities! I love reading! I love cooking! I love dancing! I love singing! I love writing! I love laughing! I love counseling people through their problems! I love....being me!.....and somehow I feel that the "me" in me is disappearing......and this year, I'd like to find her again.