Faithful steward

I feel like God has turned the seasons in my life from winter into spring - only this spring it doesn't feel like bursting into bloom it feels like sowing seeds. In her book "Looking for Lovely" Annie F Downs talks about sowing watermelon seeds of grief and reaping watermelons of joy. That's me right now. Sowing in tears with hope - with an eager expectation - that pretty soon(ish) I'll reap in abundant joy. It feels scary and there's a lot of fear and anxiety in this season but it also feels like waking up again.

Part of this season has been that God has just turned on the firehouse of encouragement on me through podcasts, sermons and videos that He has brought across my path. I watched a sermon from Annie's church in Nashville (in the series called Wonderlife) that did all kinds of good things in my soul. I followed a link on Facebook to a thing about figuring out your identity as a writer or something like that. Then Emily P Freeman sent a link out about a series of interviews she is hosting with her sister called the Hope Writers Summit and then Emily also shared about the Work by Design Summit that she participated in so I've been watching those interviews too and they have so far all been Just So Good. These interviews are shaking things awake and stirring up the things that have just drifted to the bottom. It's exciting, and scary and overwhelming.

One of the things I've been doing as a result of watching these interviews about coming alive to your purpose and becoming more fully yourself has been that I've started making lists. Stuff I love to do, want to do more in my life, makes me come alive, makes me feel most myself, stuff like that. Tonight after I finished watching my videos for the night I wrote a list of all the stuff I want to do, and it was a big long list but at the end of the list what it all boils down to for me is that I want to be a faithful steward. 

I want to be a faithful steward as a parent first because y'all can read other blogs my kids only have one mom and that's me. I can write whatever it is I end up writing now or later but my oldest is only going to start High School once and that's this year and I want to be fully present for that. I have a baby and I know I'm going to blink and he'll be grown. But I'm also more than one thing - just like we all are - and I want to become a more faithful steward of the other parts of me too. 

So I'm just going to keep showing up here. I'm going to keep being faithful and I'm going to trust the next step (and the timing of the next step) to my Heavenly Father because He is the one who made me with this writerly soul and these dreams and it is His timing that ultimately I want to honor and more than anything I want to live in the space I am in now fully. Fully alive to who God made me to be. Fully alive to the people He has put into my life right now. Fully present. Fully engaged. 

I don't know what that's going to look like a year from now or five years from now or ten years from now. I think it's okay to not know all of the next steps. This is the step I'm on now. This is the place I'm in.