Every year around December, everyone at my church chooses a name/theme for their upcoming year. We all think about it and pray about it and try to hear what God is saying to us about the next year. Well, this year I really had no idea. No matter how much I thought or prayed, I just kind of felt...nothing. It was a little frustrating, because it seemed like everybody else had their name picked out and they were really excited about seeing how what they heard from God would play out in their lives. And by the end of the year, I think most people can look back and say that God really did what he told them he'd do. But I didn't feel I had heard anything.
I guess I still need to learn that God's plan for my life's seasons doesn't always exactly follow our calendar, because about two and a half months ago (about five months after we were all supposed to name our year), I finally heard something from God about it. It was pretty sudden and unexpected, too. I was going about my life, expecting it to stay relatively the same for the next several months. Sometime around May I felt God tell me, quite unexpectedly, "It's time for some change. It's time for some new beginnings." Oh, how I underestimated how this would play out.
The first big "new beginning" was actually, in a lot of ways, an ending: quitting my job. I had thought about it before, but it just never felt like the right time. This time, however, I just knew it was right. I can't exactly explain it in logical terms, but it's like someone flipped a switch in me and it was so clear to me what I should do. I guess I can just say that the sheep know the shepherd's voice.
So I quit my job and went back to Minnesota for a few weeks, and it was exactly what I needed. I was super busy the whole time, but I think I needed to reconnect to where I came from and the people I care about there. I had been struggling with mild depression for a few months and I just didn't know how to dig myself out, but it really helped me to have a bit of a retreat. Though I was completely physically exhausted after that trip, it refreshed me in other ways. I felt a lot more ready to take on the future when I got back to Taipei at the end of June.
The second new beginning came shortly after I returned to Taipei. My very good friend Eun Young and I became official members of our church. This is kind of big for me, because I spent A LOT of time after I first became a committed Christian floating around to different churches, never quite satisfied with any of them, never willing to commit to any of them. I've been going to church my whole life, I really and truly became a Christian about seven years ago, and yet I've never made any commitment to any church. This is a new chapter in which I am committing myself to belonging and contributing to a community of other believers. I'm really excited about officially being a member of this fantastic church family.
The third new beginning is that I found a new job...and God is definitely the one who orchestrated this. A friend of mine who had no idea I was quitting my job sent me a message asking me if I knew anyone who was looking for a job, because her school needed some new teachers for the fall semester. So I got the boss's contact information, applied for the job, and two interviews later I was hired, and I'll be starting the job in August or September. I'm really nervous because it's a totally different atmosphere than the one I came from, but I'm also excited because if God provided this job for me then there must be a reason.
The fourth new beginning has to do with my relationships with other people. I won't go into detail here, but God has shown me recently that reconciliation is possible, even when we feel hopeless about it. God really does want us to be in close relationships with others and learn how to have grace and forgiveness and generosity...which is incredibly necessary because we're all sinful and do and say the wrong things sometimes. So...reconciliation and also new friendships forming. It's really beautiful.
These four things have happened in the last two months...and I did not see any of them coming. Not even one of them. God has rearranged a lot of things in my life in a really sudden way. If this is only two months of my season of "new beginnings" I can't even begin to imagine what will come later. Only God knows, I guess.
Here's a picture of my new church home! It's cool because it's one of the tallest buildings in the area, and at night the cross lights up and you can see it for miles.
