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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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But He knows the way that I take.

“When it comes to trials, to suffering I can’t control, I know He’s there,” I look at her earnestly.

I remember how I sit across from him at dinner and, by the end, he’s blowing his nose in his napkin. Stalling. Thinking of the house he’ll sleep in tonight--and how she won’t be there. I drive home with an aching heart.

“And I know, in my head, I know,” I look at her, sitting across from me in the dim office light. “I know this isn’t true.”

“But if I go to the east, he is not there…”

“It feels like he abandons me in the suffering of sin.”

“...if I go to the west, I do not find him.”

“And He leaves me alone in the middle of temptation.”

“When he is at work in the north, I do not see him…”

I get up one morning, thinking this. How God seems to leave me to break free of temptation and sever habits of lust. I flip through Job and read how he can’t see God at work.

“...when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him.”

Like I give into sin over and over again. And won't the Lord help me?

But.

It’s the Buts of the Bible that save me.

“But He gave his only begotten Son (John 3:16).” “But the gift of God is eternal life (Romans 6:23).” “But God demonstrates His love for us (Romans 5:8).”

“But he knows…”

I’m back in her office again, showing her what I found that morning in the pages of Job.

“But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold (Job 23:10).”

And if He knows, then won't He refrain from giving me more than I can handle? And won't He give me all I need to resist?

She bows her head and thanks Him for the way the rain falls gently outside and makes it all green again.

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