Select Page

Today is my birthday. I’ve been alive in the world for 38 years. Birthdays are a time for celebration, but they can also be a time for reflection. After all, a lot can happen in the course of a year.

Last night as I was folding laundry (because that’s what 37 year old moms do much of the time), I reflected over the past year. In a lot of ways, it hasn’t been a monumental year. I didn’t move or have any babies this year. I didn’t start a company or earn my doctorate. Still, this year has turned out to be anything but ordinary…

So far, 2020 has been extraordinary not just for me, but for the entire world! Who knew a global pandemic would sweep through our lives and change everyday life so dramatically? Last New Years Eve, before the word pandemic was a dot on the radar, I was feeling sentimental and slightly anxious thinking about how much could change in a year.

I remember praying about my worries, laying them before the Lord and cleansing my mind and heart before the start of the New Year. In the midst of my prayer, I felt the Lord gently impress on my spirit, “The future is too much for you. Let me hold it for you.”

How sweet the Lord is. He didn’t offer me any future knowledge or prophetic visions of what the year would bring. He didn’t give me a step by step plan of what I would do if calamity did arrive at my doorstep. He also didn’t offer me assurances that everything would be okay. Instead, He met me in my fear. He promised to be there. He promised to hold my future.

This promise was not just a figment of my imagination, because the same promise is confirmed in Scripture:

Lord, You are my portion and my cup of blessing; You hold my future.

Psalm 16:5 CSB

So, on my birthday, as I await what lies ahead in the coming year, both the joys and the sorrows, I am thankful that I will never walk the journey alone.

As Julian of Norwich said many, many centuries ago:

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”