“God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.
Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth."
The LORD Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.”
-Psalm 46: 1-3, 10, 11

Last week on the Gotham Fellowship retreat, we did an exercise where we charted out our lives (thus far) and put our good memories/experiences/etc. in chronological order alongside our not so good/ “traumatic” memories/experiences/etc. After dividing our life into chunks and evaluating what God was teaching us in each phase of our lives we were asked:

Based on where we have been with God, where do we want to be with Him at the end of the nine month period of this program?

What struck me the most about looking over each phase of my life was how much fear has dominated so much of my life. Whether it was being terrified when I was young that dinosaurs were going to come out of the woods after I saw the movie “Jurassic Park” or being totally fearful to leave home when I decided to move to New York or being afraid of transition in more recent circumstances, fear is a habit. A habit that has dominated my thoughts and therefore, I’m sure it has dominated my behavior in some ways that I am aware of and many that I am not.

So, where do I want to be at the end of nine months?
I want to be someone who trusts more in the Sovereignty of the Lord.
I want to be someone who is a little more at peace with the fact that I have no control over things.
I want to be someone who is a little more still, especially with my mind.
Someone who doesn’t waste countless minutes/hours imaging ways the bottom will drop out of each situation and then imaging what I will do to try and fix it if it does.
Someone who gets up each day and pushes her expectations for the day back and experiences a peace and joy not from circumstances but from knowing that God’s presence and approval are all that I need to have joy on a given day.

Is that a little ambitious for a nine month period?