It is one of those gray January days. The rain drizzles. The fog lingers about lazily on the boughs of oaks and the damp seeps into my bones. It’s a fuzzy sock and favorite wool turtleneck sweater day, a warm soup day, a hot chocolate by a roaring fire day, a writing day.

Not the scholarly type writing I have been doing for so long now, but a slow ruminating, a journaling where thoughts amble as they please.

I had plans for this website, but the last two years have kept me distracted with first one thing and then another. And the anothers, well, they just kept coming. Not all bad. Not all good either. And sometimes, when I have been away for so long, it is hard to find my way back. The truth is the last two years have been difficult. There has been disappointment and failure and heartbreak. There has also been beauty and joy and achievement. There has been much wrestling with God. There has been much submitting while He whittled away at the unholy bits of me, refining my thoughts, my words, my deeds. And the plans I had made, well, they no longer seem relevant because they were not moving me in the direction He had planned.

I find it strange the things I have held onto, the things I have flat refused to let go of, how hard I mourned over them all as if I had some right to my own life. I do not and I too often seem to forget this truth: I am redeemed by the blood of Yeshua and I belong to Him. He alone decides the course of my life and what best glorifies Him. So, He just kept whittling.

And while He whittled, in quietude I plodded along. There are words written which remain unread and notes piled high in need of sorting. It all sits waiting for its turn to be refined and made perfect, to be posted and submitted. But I grasp onto it, clutching it all close to my heart, aiming for a perfection I will never achieve instead of letting it go freely into the world. While the evil in the world grows, I wonder whether the words I pen matter to the one who reads them. I often ponder if all this writing is just for me. Perhaps it is best to not plan, to just turn it all loose – the chaos of notes, the words, the carefully strung together sentences – and let God do with them all what He will. Because in the end, He always has His way, and we both know His way is perfect.

Adonai is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer;
my God, my strength, in whom I will trust;
my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.
~Psalm 18.2