Here it is: the first day of a new year. Just as on this day one year ago I had no idea what challenges lay ahead, today’s future is fortunately foggy. Yes, fortunately. Were the path plainly laid out, what would I choose? Would I opt for walking a no-faith-required path?  Part of me admits that might have been my choice a year ago.  Ambulances, emergency rooms, hospital, rehab, lengthy at-home nursing and bone weariness not high on my list of desired options.

On Sarah Young’s devotional for January first, I’ve highlighted these words: “A close walk with (God) is a life of continual newness.” Continual newness.  I melt at the “newness” of a baby’s face, smile at spring’s first robin, revel in the feel of a soft new sweater. But continual newness in my walk with God (and others) means fresh challenges, fresh relationships with their as-yet-undiscovered quirks and quackiness , fresh–often painful–understanding of myself, fresh steps of faith that may (will!) take determination and responsibility. It’s this continual newness that I must decide upon today .

It’s relatively easy at age 25 or 40 or even 50 😏 to walk boldly into newness, but if I am to be “God’s Perennial Woman,” I must choose on this first day of 2019–with all its unknowns, questions and even all its fears–to follow the path of newness. Continual newness.

Eugene Peterson’s Romans 12:1-2 paraphrase (with my underlining and thoughts) provides a good map for the days ahead:

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life–your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life–and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture (even the culture that expects what a person “your age” or station in life should be or do!) that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God.  You’ll be changed (continually renewed) from the inside out…

So simple. So revolutionary. So freeing.