As January gets on it’s way do you have the thought lingering there in your mind, the thought you don’t want to say out loud for fear of jinxing it, but you just can’t help wonder – sometimes to obsession?
The thought, “What if this is the year . . . I meet him?”
Him. The One. The One who meets 95% of the requirements on your “must-haves” list and is the twin of the man in your mind who you’ve been secretly designing for years. The One who takes you on a first date that begins a family legacy talked about for generations. The One who makes you say, “He’s the one. I just know it. I can’t explain it, but I just know it.” The One who will be there next Christmas and New Year’s. The One who will cause your life to begin.
In an effort to meet the One you eagerly start off the new year attending every social event possible. Volunteering for every service project available. All the while scanning every room you walk into just in case he might be there.
This thought dominated my mind as a new year began each year. I felt excited at the possibility that this could be the year, but then terrified at the thought that it might not be, and I would conclude another year with my deepest desire left there for me to carry into one more new year of life without a husband.
There is nothing wrong with dreaming about the wonderful possibilities that a new year can bring. In many ways this is a key to our motivation to make our lives new and different and maybe better.
But it becomes debilitating when we take our dreams and hold onto them too tight, as our own, manipulating them into a world that doesn’t yet exist and betting on a world that has yet to be made. We start making decisions based upon what’s not real. Our mind is stuck in all the “what ifs” instead of firmly planted in the purpose for right now. Before we know it our “what-ifs” start to look like the right now, and we are blinded to reality.
Maybe you want to buy a house or go on a mission trip or go into the mission field full-time. Maybe it’s changing jobs or moving up in your job or just moving in general. Maybe it’s buying new furniture or redecorating or going back to school.
Whatever it is that God has laid in your mind and on your heart, make decisions about those possibilities not based on whether this is the year you meet your future husband or not, but based on whether it is God’s plan for you this year, at this time in your life. Many opportunities are lost when we think we know better than God and try to manipulate our circumstances to make our year unfold the way we dream of it unfolding.
Betting on your future will cost you.
It costed me.
It costed me opportunities and possibilities. It costed me my true purpose. It costed me time. It costed me peace.
Whatever God is leading you to do – do it – without considering dreams that are not yet yours. Don’t bet on what might be tomorrow. Because then you won’t have today to take with you.
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