Fireplace: Reluctantly, you change.

I supposed the biggest problem is that I haven't quite changed my mental image of myself.
You see, I never expected to reach here, despite putting it in my goal setting every year. You had to have a goal to set, right? Didn't mean that you actually saw yourself getting there.

I'd calculated that I wouldn't be here for another 2 years yet. After all, when I first joined they said it takes 8 years. EIGHT YEARS, right? Not six and slightly less than a half. And in my mental image of me, I'd be out of here before then, maybe married (HAH), hopefully working a half day job whilst building a creative arts team in church and writing my novel. I had time to slowly work things out for another year, at least, until I got there.

Things never work out how you imagine it to be. You wish that it would, but life never follows your schedule, especially with God in the mix.

And as everything piles up, it's very easy to think of this as a curse, as if God didn't think I had enough to deal with, contrary to normal expectations that I would be happy. (Ender randomly comes to mind. Not all promotions are good for you, physically and mentally.) Sometimes I wonder if I'm even normal, if the responses I have actually correlate to what the general population would feel. But I've been reminded a couple of times that promotion comes from the Lord so I'm holding on to that - that this year will not be the death of my creative dreams, that this year will not end with defeat before it even starts.

Psalm 65:11 says:

You crown the year with Your goodness, richness overflows wherever You are.

Goodness (NIV says bounty) has overflowed in the past year, as I said in my 2012 year end review, and looking back, I have no idea how I did all of that, except by God's grace. So I'm holding on to that. I'm holding on to His promise that when we walk in His ways, we will be the head and not the tail.

May the latter continually be greater as you walk with Him.