January Reflection
Old picture; same feelings.
It’s February, one month into the new year, and we are continuing in this strange sort of between time. This week, I found it helpful to borrow Emily P. Freeman’s January reflection questions as a way to ground myself in exactly where I am.
Where did you see God in January?
I saw God in nature--specifically, in the sunrise. In early January, I curled up on the couch with my coffee and Bible in the mornings and kept an eye on the sky, watching the colors shift and lighten. Some mornings, the sky would be a soft pink with a hazy glow; others, a pale blue shrouded in clouds. I loved driving to work under a giant dome of a sky scattered with thick piles of clouds that looked like a pillow exploded above the sunroof of my car.
Now, I am up much earlier, often while the sun is still rubbing the sleep from its eyes. Darkness is shot with streaks of color, and the edges of the clouds are rolling back. The stars are still my favorite view of the sky, but God really shows off in the mornings, and each day I love to see what art he is creating there.
2. What’s one quote that you heard that you had to write down?
“Embrace the splatter.”
I want to credit Bri McKoy with this, because it sounds like something she would say. Bri is a food blogger and one of my favorite follows on Instagram. I’m currently near the end of her Everyday Kitchen Masterclass (so much good cooking info, and outstanding recipes). I feel like she said this in a Facebook live for the class, talking about being okay with the mess cooking makes, but honestly, I could be making that up.
Wherever I heard it, it stuck with me. I’m actually not that great at embracing the splatter, either in cooking or in life. I like organization. I make plans and lists and backup plans for every eventuality. I like to be in control.
Although I know intellectually that God is the only one in control, I am consistently blindsided when I am splattered by the sideways turns my best-laid plans take. My mind scurries to figure out where I could have planned better, done better, been better.
What I’m trying to remind myself is that mistakes and waylaid plans are no indication of my ultimate worth. Everything just goes wrong sometimes, and if I remember who I am (and whose I am), it gets easier to open my mind and heart to the mistakes too, and to let myself learn.
In the kitchen, I’m learning to wear an apron so the splatter from tomato sauce ruins fewer shirts. In my life, it’s prayer, family, conversation, books, and time noticing what God is doing that are helping me embrace the splatter--or if not exactly embracing it, then accepting it.
3, What is one word that you’re holding on to as you move into February?
Content.
My word for the year is actually notice, six little letters that are definitely at active work in my life, but in January and February, months that traditionally have been somewhat of a slog, I have found myself slowing down and trying to pay attention to things that are simply satisfying.
In the gray and dreary clouds of February, there is the bright red flash of Valentine’s Day, which I love. There are snatches of snow, sometimes even enough to get us a day at home from school. There is a fire in the fireplace. There are laughter and movies and popcorn and long books. There are the best hugs. I can let myself get bogged in the repetition and the monochromatic sameness of every day, or I can say, “Thank you, God.” When I look at my life this way, it feels like I am overflowing with good things.
