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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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The Ambition of a Quiet Life

I listen to him as he speaks from the front of the church, his voice almost hoarse with passion. Pursue the Kingdom first, he says. Like those people receiving death threats for Christ-centered living.

I’m desperate to know my place in the world, for the Kingdom. A not-quite-quarter-life crisis. I’ll take the death threats, Lord. I’ll go anywhere. (Or so I think.)

The church clears and I walk slowly to the front and ask her to pray for me. The strength of her wrinkled hands surprises me as she folds them into mine and I wonder if the Holy Spirit is teleprompting her. “You want to be obedient, but you want to know exactly what that means for you,” she looks me in the eyes.

I nod, remembering a conversation I’d had weeks ago. “Everyone talks about their ambitions,” she had said to me as we watched the light bounce across the ripples on the lake. “All I want is a quiet life, to be involved in the church.”

The lady with the wrinkled hands prays for my zealous conviction to be transformed into clear direction.

And I’m remembering how the girl at the lake had said she wanted a quiet life. To be a member of the body. A low-profile servant. Now that’s ambitious.  

I’m foolish, zealous without discipline. I think I’m willing to be burned at the stake when I’m not willing to turn off the snooze button and meet the morning with prayer.  

The lady’s wrinkled hands squeeze mine before letting go. And I wonder how she became insightful, where she learned to pray.

There must have been many many mundane moments in many many ordinary days where she chose to take the offensive against laziness and storm the towers of selfishness.

She must have been ambitious. She must have been brave.

“Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.” 1 Thessalonians 4:12

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