Commit to the Review

This post is by Patty Lewis. 

 Psalm 139:23-24

23 Search me, God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
    and lead me in the way everlasting.

Something is wrong in my heart.

I know this because I do not feel right with the Lord and right with my husband. This has been the nagging feeling lately amidst the joy of the holiday season and the fun we have had. There has also been some arguing and uncomfortable times. This coming February will mark 22 years of marriage, and 17 years our son has been alive. That is a long time and so much to celebrate. 

Along with all these years come some big changes recently.  After 16 years being employed by our church, my husband changed jobs entirely and went to work teaching full time for our local middle school. We decided to move out of the homeschool ministry with our church and enjoy a more flexible homeschool schedule with closer family and friends.  My mother-in-law moved out after living with us for 14 ½ years. We have attended Sunday services at another campus for half the year and now moved back to our main campus. We’ve been faced with some pretty serious situations with family members that we currently really can’t speak much about, except to say I haven’t spoken to my sister directly in a year, and we are both going through difficult circumstances. I do not know what is happening a lot of the time, and yet I choose to continue to place my trust in The Lord.

I am sharing this because I have found myself wondering how to navigate each day. I have found that something is not right. You know what it is? The same temptations I most often succumb to: putting others before my husband and son, getting my priorities out of order and making excuses all along the way for it. I know this feeling; I am familiar with it. However, I get tricked easily sometimes. I cannot see clearly. Not because God is not willing to share His wisdom and show me the way. No, it is because I refuse to seek Him wholly and believe Him when He shows me. I make excuses or put it off.

It is important to be real and honest. I am not someone you know well, but I am putting these words down in hope that I might encourage others to commit to the review at the outset of vision and goal setting. Once the vision has been cast, the dreams of accomplishing or living out a certain goal or habit have been set out, we must commit to reviewing it with our Lord, asking ourselves questions and being willing to be open about where we are even amid extremely difficult situations, circumstances, and relationships.  I am willing to consider, reflect, review, preview and then set prayerfully about my vision for this year and my goals I want to set. I must also be willing to mark down when I will check in and review where I am, where God is calling me and if I need to change anything.

Do you know what I need to change right now? I know it more clearly today because I have been living in pain and lack of peace in my marriage. Putting my husband first is going to be the thing to change. Which means, after much prayer, and confession to the Lord and friends, I have seen how I am responsible for a great deal of the pain in my marriage currently. I also realized it is time to ask my husband about stepping back from serving at youth on Wednesdays. We go with our son, and we serve in junior high while he attends the high school part. It’s just such a long day and we really don’t get much time together.  We are so busy; we are so tired. There is not much left for one another.

Finally, after a long time and some serious fights, I realize I need to find out how to make more room for us in our lives—how to put God first, then my Husband. I’m sharing this because often we find ourselves amidst some really challenging circumstances, and we might begin to vision/goal set out of an unhealthy place when we really need to go before the Lord to directly address unrest and lack of peace.  Sometimes we want to move forward when we need to get to the foot of the cross and do some business with our Lord.

This might not be your situation; you may be at peace and ready to do this thing! Great! Let’s do it!!

As I’ve been making notes on the importance of committing to review the goals I set and the vision I have for what this next year will look like, God has used this to show me that my people are most important and this year won’t look like what I thought, that I will have to be willing to let go of the way I think things should look. I see that I need to genuinely ask my husband what we can change to make room for us. I need to be willing to let go, even immediately, and let him handle some of the details.

I encourage you also to commit to the review. Be willing to let God change things in your life. Let’s be willing, daily and periodically, to look closely at the vision we have, the goals we set and ask if we are allowing God to work in our lives to accomplish them. Is there space available to allow Him to change them to accomplish His good and perfect will in our lives?

May The Lord bless you and keep you!

Patty Lewis lives on the Space Coast of Florida with her Husband, Son and one cat. She is a homeschool Momma, loves serving other Moms and Youth in her Church and community through encouragement in practical ways and enjoys reading, gardening, Disney, coffee, anything with her family and laughing really loud.

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash