Being Content in the “New”

Tonight we are 3 for 3, all doing something new. One daughter is participating in a sports camp, though she has never played this sport before. Another is competing in a summer sport, unhappily and I get to work the compeition with people I don’t know.

It didn’t go so well for me. I didn’t manage to make any new friends. Is it ok for me to talk about me first? Maybe it was the suffering from re-entry from my hometown where it’s familiar and I come back here and within the first 24 hours manage to feel so, so completely unknown? Or that I watched close girlfriends talk and laugh and wished I was sitting with them? I could go on, but I think I’ll stop there.

I think my teenager fared better than I did. The other competed in a lowest rank (though that doesn’t matter) and came in first and second. Maybe that’s where we feel we all score right now, in the lowest rank. What a humbling place to be. I’d call that character building. I think my precious husband and my own dad would call it that. Then, if they say that, and I value every word they speak, I accept it. I am in the lowest rank. Do I have to be in the first heat? Absolutely not. Jesus ranked in such a low order of importance in our human world that He was born in a stable and ended up homeless and then put to death by His Father’s chosen people. So I guess I need to put my sad self aside and “chin up we are with you” as my mother would say.

In the moments I am allowed to feel the despair, I cry out to Jesus and listen to one of my favorite songs “Come to Jesus and Live.” He wants to take my sadness, He is > my sadness. I know that, but I can’t hide from my humanness. I’m crawling here, I’m new, I’m a baby at being new again. I know that. I guess sometimes my humanness surprises even me. Sometimes, I am lonely. What’s wrong with saying that? Does that make me a weak person? No, it just shows my full reliance needs to be on Jesus. He sees me. He sees my puffy, tear filled brown eyes that I don’t want anyone else to see. That’s ok. I think I’m finished crying now. I nail this, too, to the cross.

It’s hard at any age to be the new girl. I need to be content being new. God is > my newness.