Back to the drawing board

Twice in the last year, God has prompted me to write.

The first time, I spent a lot of prayerful time asking God what I should write about. I thought and thought, couldn't decide HOW God wanted me to serve with the wit of my written word...until I felt God solidly roll His eyes at me. "Emily, the writing was to help YOU out, not to bless the world."

Okay. That makes sense.

Now I'm getting that prompting again, and though I feel little direction on how I should write, I sit down to write something...

This year has been tough. In fact, there has been a string of tough years. I'm ready for a good one, a year where I make enough money to support myself without the charity of others. A year where I have a romantic life. A year where I have fewer sob-stories and less practice in negativity. I recently played "The Game of Things" with a group of friends where you make a list of things, and everyone guesses which person submitted which answer. The prompt was "Things you think about in the car." Without hesitating, my answer was "All my life failures." That made me stop a click and consider my life habits. Seriously? I commute extensively, and I think about my failures that much? In the last few weeks, I've tried to break that habit, and you know what? It's hard. Particularly when my life offers soooo much material on that topic.

Whew, avoiding that bitter streak. (I'm not even in my car!)

Even though life has been less than grand, God has been directly present and good in surprisingly specific ways.

A couple of years ago I was still wrestling with repatriation, and I asked my 6-person choir to pray that I could find a large group to sing with. And wow, was that prayer answered! I found a couple of choirs at Marylhurst University, and in some of the poorest times of my life, I've been to three European countries with those choirs. I'm currently at 8 foreign countries and counting....

My next few posts will be about my travel memories and expectations of the next year. I may not be living abroad at the moment, but I can revel in my memories like nobody's business. Time to change up the things I think about in the car.