Hey look! No ads! I figured after 10 years it was about time to pony up and get a tad bit more professional. So I’m sorry to say, from here on out, there will be no more pictures of toenail fungus to finish off my posts.
It’s also the last-ish day of the first month. January was a whirlwind, as per usual. You guys, we’re 1/12th done with 2020 already. How is that possible?
So this year, I don’t have a word to focus on. I prayed at the end of last year and asked God if there was a word He wanted me to focus on and this time I got nothin’. I kept thinking maybe I just wasn’t listening and had missed His prompting. I asked again. But still … nothing.
I have come to the realization that this year is not about a word. It’s about a concept. A theme. A 2020 vision, if you will. And it’s summed up pretty well by this post I read the other day that talked about something the Lord has been prompting me to work on for a while now. As soon as I read the post, I knew it was what God wanted for me this year.
Stop trying to manage other people.
I have lived my entire life trying to get other people to behave a certain way. To make the decisions I think they should make. To choose the things I think they should choose. [It’s exhausting to live this way, by the way.]
Seriously, it’s like I have lived 41 years of other people’s lives.
When I became a parent, and had two babies and who then became toddlers, much of my job as Mom was to manage. I did make their decisions. At least as far as when bedtime was, what they ate, how they dressed, how often they bathed. etc.
It was like I was finally “supposed” to do what came naturally to me.
But as they have grown up and become their own people, I’ve had a hard time letting go of that control.
Letting my daughter make her own decisions about how to take care her hair. Letting my son wear athletic shorts. Every. Single. Day. Letting my daughter tackle a problem, even if I think I know a better way. Letting my son fumble through learning the social skills that elude many seven-year-old boys. Letting natural consequences teach them. Letting life lessons happen. Letting them fail.
I find that I can’t flip some management switch and just turn it off.
And of course, there’s the fact that for years I’ve acted as if I am able to manage my fully-grown adult husband. [Which, for those of you who know him, you know how ridiculous that statement is.] This is, of course, exactly how God works … giving me a Husband-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Managed.
Obviously my efforts to control him have been an ongoing source of conflict in our marriage.
So. Here we are in 2020. A new decade. A year that, by it’s very name, lends itself to clear vision. A fresh outlook. A new way of being.
And I’m ready for the new. I’m ready to flip the switch.
I’m officially resigning my role of Manager. [A role that never really should have been mine to begin with.]
I’m sure if you were to ask my family, they’d express equal parts hope and skepticism. Actually, that’s kind of how I feel too. This change has been a long time coming. It should have happened years ago.
But as I’m sure you are aware, life is a journey. And some things can only be learned by walking through the pain caused by getting it wrong. That seems especially true with me. I won’t make the hard changes until it hurts too much to not change. Or until, for some reason, something finally clicks. Or one day, for no apparent reason, an epiphany happens.
Or God uses a randomly stumbled upon blog post to say what He’s been telling me for years. And finally I’m at the place where I’m ready to listen.
These Words of Mine 
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