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How to have a truly happy new year.

For the first time in years, I don’t remember my New Year’s resolution from January. Usually, I write it down in my journal or on a note I stick to my mirror. There’s been many of those dog-eared sticky notes from years past. The year of contentment. Speaking life. We passed pancakes across the breakfast table on January 1st this year. “What do you want from 2018?” I can’t remember my answer. I know what I didn’t want though. I didn’t want to walk into her office and share the parts of my life I’m inclined to hide. I didn’t want to Facetime her the day after she delivered her baby that never breathed. I didn’t want to spend four months wondering how I’d walk into her house on Christmas day and see her empty chair. I didn’t want to go on another first date that led nowhere. We sit across from each other in a little coffee shop in Colorado, picking at a charcuterie board. “When I think about all of the things I have left to go through,” her voice cracks....
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Courage like Peter

It’s always a dangerous thing to pray. Dangerous for the flesh. Dangerous for the enemy.

I ask her to pray for an opportunity for me to be bold. And she does.

It comes on a Thursday night at dinner. They bring up religion. What is heaven like? They speculate. What is God like?

My heart starts pounding. And I sit there quietly, thinking of all the things I should say.

I go back to my hotel room and feel like weeping for my hypocrisy of silence.

I claim His benefits. And dodge the costs.

Sometimes the days of half-hearted closet Christianity outshine the days of courageous, out-spoken faith.

In my hotel room, I flip to the book of Matthew, where Peter denies Christ in one of the most crucial hours of history.

Peter, friend of Jesus. Unfaithful. Afraid of what others think.

Like me.

But I didn’t sign up for hiding behind the dashboards of my blog or underneath my introverted personality label.

And I’d rather stand with Christ while my hands sweat and my voice shakes and my face burns than not stand with Him at all.

I flip to Acts and joy comes to me there.

Because the once quavering Peter addresses the crowds like a different man. “God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of it,” he proclaims. (Acts 2:32)

Changed after being with the risen Christ.

And I know the risen Christ too, but I’ve been with Him so seldom lately.

I’ve neglected the prayer closet. Maybe that’s the problem.

Because it’s hard to be a closet Christian when there is intimacy with Christ in the closet.

And, perhaps, the start of courage begins behind closed doors in the quiet before the dawn. On bended knees.

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