Trusting in Christ

Affirmation:  I dedicate this year of 2015 to trusting in Christ.

It’s January 1st, 2015 and that can be a time for reflection and retrospection.  I know many people make some sort of New Year’s resolution.  It can be a very common topic during the first few days of January; “Have you set any New Year’s resolutions?”  We all know how they usually go.  Most people are lucky if they hold onto those resolutions for more than a day.  You know the usuals: lose weight, stop smoking, begin exercising, eat healthy, spend more time in prayer and or mediation, etc. and then life takes over.  The holidays are finished and most of us head back to work or to our normal routine and that routine doesn’t include those good intentions.  There is however, ways to make permanent changes in our life.  Some changes we choose, those can be a gift we give ourselves.  Other changes are thrust upon us, and depending upon how we approach those, they can also be a gift we give ourselves.  

I’m very excited about this New Year.  I must admit coming out of Christmas and looking towards the New Year, I didn’t feel excited.  I felt anxious but I’ve been consistently journaling and reading as much inspirational and motivational writings as are available to me and I’ve decided that this is my year to simply go with the flow, to let go of the struggle and the challenges that I’ve always created for myself.  My study group, The Seekers, is presently reading Martha Beck’s Finding Your Own North Star.  I really had a difficult time relating to the beginning of the book but midway through it took on new meaning.  The section we are presently studying is about The Change Cycle.  Change, one of those elements that every human being experiences and experiences all the time.  Sometimes we are aware of the changes, they are dramatic and potent but most change is subtle and insidious.  We go through life not paying much attention to it.  It hasn’t really commanded our attention but it’s always there and how we deal with small changes is a precursor to how we deal with large changes. 

My Enneagram type, Type 7, is prone to anticipation.  It’s part two of Martha Beck’s Change Cycle.  That may sound exciting but the truth is it can be exhausting and it takes me “out of the moment,” out of the experience of the present.  I miss too much by not paying attention to the Now.  Between Martha and the information about my personality type in the Enneagram, I decided not to live like that this year.  This year my intention is to allow life to unfold.  I want to live in the movement of the spirit.  I can’t tell you what that will look like and I will tell you I have prayed that I am not called to be a martyr but I’m still going to go with it. 

I owe this year’s intention to one of my dear friends and study group traveler.  She gifted me with the book, One Word That Will Change Your Life by Jon Gordon and she has shared with me over the year the impact of focusing on one word, like taking a mantra.  I know my intention is more than one word but the word I’ve chosen to focus on is Trust.  It’s been here now for a few years, floating in and out of my consciousness and my affirmations.  A while back I developed the RTR principle: I fully Rest in God’s care, I Trust in God’s love and I Release myself from any struggle.  It was helpful but it was a little like a resolution; I didn’t hold onto it for very long.  I have discovered that when I take an intention for the year, miraculous things, subtle and not so subtle take place and without a lot of effort my life takes on new meaning and color. 

This is the third year of taking an intention, declaring the year a “year of.”  This last year you might recall was “The year of connecting to the Divine.”  It’s been a wild roller coaster ride with the publishing of my book in February, the death of my mother, Margaret Grolimund in March and the marriage of my daughter, Ellen, to Adam O’Sullivan in May but through it all there’s been a peace and a sense of being in the presence of a greater power.  Each morning my journal had the year’s intention written at the top of the page and even though I mostly left the thought as I went throughout my day, I still carried it with me in my inner being.  As with all affirmations I believe they first enter your consciousness, then our subconsciousness and then they permeate our cellular being and we are different, different in ways we might never even imagined but different in ways that enhance our lives. 

I’m ready!  I’m excited about this year’s intention.  I am expecting amazing, miraculous things.  I know life will still hold all the challenges life normally holds and maybe a few I can’t even imagine and for which I would never ask but I’ll be good.  I’ll let this new intention seep deep within me and whatever the world throws at me, I’ll be breathing deeply and knowing that since I’ve made a conscious choice, every day to trust in Christ, I’ll look back on this year, just as I did on 2014 and see the miracles and the blessings in all the hills and the valleys that is the ride of my life.