What do you want to leave in twenty-seventeen?  Regrets? Conversations? Decisions? Everyday moments that didn’t unfold as you’d hoped? Instead of letting go, too often we hold on. We hold on in the attempt to understand, to recover something of worth. Holding on anchors us to the past. In order to make way for the new year, I’m choosing to empty myself of the stale enablement of yesteryear. 

The stale (old, tired, bored) enablement (anointing, grace and ease) I want to leave behind are those things that were a stretch in twenty-seventeen but are now comfortable and easy. The familiar habits that no longer engage my body, soul and spirit are not fitting for the next season.

Today I took the time to document the things that subtly plague my heart. Memories and conversations that my mind chooses to rehearse when I’m alone, allowing my mind to drift. Like a small artefact carefully picked up and examined, viewing every angle and perspective; there are places my mind wanders and I am choosing to leave them behind.

As part of the practice, I sat and typed out the minor disappointments and purged them from my system. It felt good to fill the screen with the subconscious babble that fills my mind. There was a beginning, a middle, and an end. In my mind it was endless but on screen it had borders. Nothing is ever as big as it seems when you put pen to paper, or fingers to keys. My 1272 word monologue finished with a few thoughts I kept before deleting the rest:

As I look back, I pull from the rubble what is worth polishing and keeping on the mantelpiece of the lounge room of my current life:

• Don’t waste time wondering what God is up to, grieving the season you’re in. It will be over before you know it.
• Value yourself, your marriage, your life. It is your life that builds the Kingdom.
• Don’t build with earthly eyes: build the unseen and the unmeasured. Let heaven keep count.

I salvaged the treasures then pressed delete. This was symbolic of the desire to remove the residue of yesteryear. Clearing out the old and allowing a fresh backdrop for new dreaming.

Stephen Covey encourages us to begin with the end in mind. So, as I begin 2018 I’m considering what I want to see at the end of my life.

• I don’t want to look back and see what I built with my own hands. I want to look back and know that I built what Jesus asked me to build, what He built through me. In the seen and the unseen I don’t want to fill my time with uncommissioned tasks but instead, know my time and hands were occupied by the things that are in His heart for me.
• I want His burdens became my prayers. 
• I want to see the fingerprint of God on everything that I held in my small outstretched hands. His fingerprint reminding me that the things to hold dear are the things that have first passed through His hands before being entrusted to me. That I did not reach for or cling to anything that was not mine to steward. 

For me, 2018 is about keeping it simple: I am a servant of Christ and a steward of His mysteries (1 Corinthians 4:1).  In my devotions, I’ll start unpacking what it means to be a servant of Christ and a steward of His mysteries in different aspects of my life. Mainly it reminds me to live simply.

What is it for you?

What are you leaving in twenty-seventeen and what are you choosing to embrace in twenty-eighteen?

Best wishes for bringing the new year in xx

Carly lives on the Gold Coast, Australia with her husband Joe and their two girls: Beni and Selah. She is a passionate follower of Jesus Christ, a lover of His Church, people and life in general.

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