Wait.  It’s October????

I have absolutely no idea how that happened.

Where has the time gone?

And yet….

I stop and think about what my summer looked like and all that happened and I’m somewhat amazed that it isn’t already March, 2014.

It’s like somehow time both flew and expanded to allow so much to take place in such a short span.

In four months’ time we’ve experienced a new job, a new location, a new house, a new neighborhood, new friends, a new church, new volunteer and ministry opportunities.  We’ve learned hundreds of new things and grown in dozens of new ways.

I am not the same person I was four short months ago.

Oh, I’m still the dork with a horrible sense of direction.  Still a terrible driver with very little concept of time.  Still function (at some level!) without a calendar and would skip dinner every night if it meant I didn’t have to cook. My quirks are probably getting only quirkier with every passing day.

But there are so many much needed changes..

My bent toward panic and anxiety has melted and mellowed into a “healthy urgency” – experiencing the passion without the need to run ahead of the Game Plan.

My frenetic pace has slowed to a more deliberate walking.  Actually smelling the roses and the coffee and the chocolate along the way, both literally and figuratively.

I’m listening better because my relaxed heart can better engage.

I’m liking the sound of my own voice less and the voices of others more.

Every endeavor, though more in number, is along a similar, focused theme and allows my random mind to nestle in sweet boundaries.

There is no question that many of these changes are the result of getting older and entering into this new stage of empty nesting.  There is a natural contentment and mellowing that comes with age, maturity and experience.

But it’s more than that.  It’s God very actively at work in my heart, changing, rearranging and cleaning out.  It’s God using these amazing people and surroundings to teach me more of His nature and character.  It’s God’s spirit giving glimpses of eternity and eternal perspective that make the unnecessary worries pale in comparison.

It’s Him, all over again, fresh and new, showing me His passionate love for the people He has so purposely put in my life and not letting me look away.  Placing a “healthy urgency” to share that love on a daily basis in the most simple of ways.  And suddenly, I can’t imagine living any other way…

So, though I still trip over my own feet and still put those same feet in my mouth, there are profound ways that God is changing me from the inside out.  Changes, I’m sure, that are long overdue.  Changes that will make me more available physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. And I hope He never, ever stops working on this random, imperfect, nerdy heart…

Philippians 1:6 – being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completionuntil the day of Christ Jesus.

Philippians 3:13-14 – Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Ephesians 3:20 – Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us…