What was lighting your inner fire last year at the beginning of 2020? What were you planning to accomplish over the next year? One of my goals was to “become a writer”. I put that in quotes because I don’t know if I believe anymore one needs to “become a writer” to BE a writer. Anyway, I was going to blog consistently and felt the Holy Spirit telling me to write my story in book format. I invested in a great Christian writing community, Compel.

How did it go, you may ask? Meh. Let’s see, what worked? Well, I blogged the most I ever have in a year and grew in confidence to talk about my blog with others. I followed the Holy Spirit’s lead in sharing specific posts with individuals. That’s about it. Also I hardly took advantage of all that Compel offers. A lot didn’t go as planned and COVID wasn’t to blame for this one.

I never set S.M.A.R.T. goals. Believe me, I know better than not to but I didn’t. So then “consistent” blogging didn’t happen and, well, my story has definitely not been written. Besides not having S.M.A.R.T. goals, I really let fear take the lead. You see, I’ve always wanted to write. Honestly, I don’t know that I ever shared that with anyone with complete transparency. It is scary to voice a desire for which you feel you have no qualifications. I mean, I hardly remember much of the grammar lessons learned in school. How could I really do this? When other things nudged in on my scheduled writing time I’d gladly give into the interruptions to avoid writing. I told myself that to be successful at writing I would need to go all out on social media. Having recently resigned from a job that had me on social media all the time I was really liking the freedom of not having to be “social”, the freedom to be where my feet were and not post about it. Also, publishing would be a nightmare. Right? Did I 100% know any of these concerns to be factual? Not at all. But those were the lies I told myself.

Let’s go back to that word “successful”. What defines success? I’ve decided it is WHO defines it that matters more. If I take me and the world out of the driver’s seat and hand the keys to Christ the picture becomes a lot clearer and simpler. “Put God in charge of your work, then what you’ve planned will take place.” (Proverbs 16:3 The Message). Since God confirmed this path in my heart, it WILL happen. Success, whatever shape that takes, will happen because it will have been God who gave me the task. All He asks is that I respond like Isaiah and say, “Here I am.” (Isaiah 6:8). Okay, Jesus and 2021. Here I am.