Fulfillment

It is a new year.   Like most people, I made up my resolutions and goals for the year.  Unlike previous years, I have them posted on the refrigerator as a constant reminder staring at me.  And to not get so overwhelmed, I have my weekly goals taped next to my bathroom sink – small goals working toward the larger goals.  Backing up these goals is my word of the year, “BALANCE.”  This is my year of balance.  I have a history of making goals that are so extreme that I cannot possibly achieve them, or if I could achieve them it comes at a sacrifice for other more worthy efforts.  

Behind balance is another word, fulfillment.   This has been a rough Indiana weather week.  Snow, subzero temps leading to being cooped up in the house for a few days.  I have not worked in nearly three weeks and my kids have yet to return to school (today is the magic day back!)  I spent the last week doing NOTHING.  And I mean NOTHING productive.  I watched TV.  I played a whole lot of MarioKart with my kindergarten son, who for the record is waaaaay better than me.  I built blanket forts and snow forts.  My productivity went out the window and is buried somewhere under the foot of snow in my backyard. I had books I wanted to read; house projects that could have been accomplished . . . And it got me thinking, what am I really pursuing? 

I have spent my life being competitive and working toward being “the best.”  And if I could not be the best, then I would at least create an image that looked the part – sort of a “fake it till I make it.”  Doing nothing was never okay, and if I was just wasting time I sure as heck would not admit it to any onlookers.   School has always come easy until now – nursing school is dishing me some humble pie.  I am not the best.  I do not have straight “A’s”.  It is forcing me to accept there is more to life than letter grades – that I am more than what a transcript says about me. 

Grades, a fit body, achievement, production – these do not bring me to a place of fulfillment.  They fill time and anxious space, but they do not bring me real joy and satisfaction.   Fulfillment comes when I am living fully the life I have been called to live.  I am mother.  I am wife.  I am healer/therapist.  I am called to be an incarnational representation of Christ to those around me.  So as I made my goals this year, it came back to this – what will lead to greater fulfillment?  What will bring me closer to Christ and the person he has called me to be?