The nooks and crannies

Personal Photo: July 2022 - Clay and I were saving money when we celebrated our one-year wedding anniversary. Instead of a fancy dinner and getting dressed up, we went on a bike ride and had a picnic by the river. In the middle of the ride, Clay stopped and cut me a bouquet of wildflowers from the side of the trail. My water bottle served as the vase, and I still think that this small act of kindness he displayed to me touched my heart more than any gift he could have purchased. A nook of my life where I had the chance to appreciate the gift of my husband from God. :)

Happy New Year! I hope you all had happy and healthy celebrations of Christmas and the New Year, along with getting the chance to spend time with loved ones! Now that the new year is here (2023 already?!), I think we have all been spending some time thinking about our resolutions. The ways we want to get better, the things we want to make time for, the extra work and energy and time we imagine having at the breaking of dawn on a new trip around the sun. Resolutions and goals can be very exciting, inspirational, and even motivating, but I spent quite a bit of time considering how challenging this time of year can actually be for us.

Think about it: It is not the action of setting goals that make it a challenging time of year, but rather it is how we go about achieving them. In this way, we are often setting ourselves up for failure without even knowing it. Wrapped up in our excitement, we convince ourselves that, sure, we can wake up at five am every morning and get a workout in before we head into the office; Of course, we can lose those fifteen pounds in a month; Absolutely, we can make a million changes in our lifestyle in the blink of an eye and remain positive and healthy and motivated. You see my point here I hope. The goals themselves are admirable, but the sudden burst of dedication is often short-lived. Truly, the New Year is a time of confusion for many of us. We are trying to edit the person we used to be and we aren't quite yet the person we want to be. Stuck in the middle, it is easy to fall off the proverbial wagon, to get sucked back into old routines, and to find that we are actually compromising our health by whiplashing our bodies into a routine that we are unfamiliar with.

This concept got me thinking about how we can actually change our lifestyle. How we can truly appreciate the step by step of progress. My mom always tells me that "any progress is good progress." She is right; we have to take it one step at a time. Everything is this way; when we are learning something new, when we are trying to clean something, when we are looking for a long-lasting change. This is why I titled this article 'The nooks and crannies.' When we attempt to make drastic and dramatic changes to the way we live, it can be hard to find our way, to stick to our goals, and to remain motivated. However, when we can make those lifestyle changes in the smallest of ways, they can quickly add up to make big progress. For example, if one of our resolutions is to be more giving (one that is always on my list!), we might find that donating a few dollars or items to a charity, spending extra time helping a loved one, or sharing a memory with someone can really make a big impact on who you are as a person. Likewise, if you want to get in better shape, starting with short stretches and moving up to some intense and difficult workouts can help your body adjust to the challenge and gracefully get stronger without risking illness or injury. I think this is important. Glory, satisfaction, and long-term results are not found in record-breaking time, but instead growth takes patience, it takes consistency, and it takes appreciation.

Along that vein, how many of us have a resolution related to God? What do you want? A better relationship with Him, some sort of peace amidst the turbulence of your life, to read His word closer or for the first time, guidance during a chapter of hazy confusion, a mix of them, or is it something else entirely? Regardless of what it is, I think we adopt the eagerness that comes with the New Year, and if we are not careful, it can quickly turn into impatience for results and responses from God. We want to see immediate results, we want to see our short burst of dedication bear fruit, and we want to see our grand plans for change unroll like a red carpet on a runway. I don't even think we know we do it most of the time. We are excited, we are caught up in the energy, we are ready for a change, which are all wonderful. Again, it is not the setting of the goals, but how we go about achieving them. Just like our other resolutions, the problem comes in when we expect results in the snap of a finger. We quickly burnout, we can lose faith as quickly as we adopted it because God wasn't working on our timetable. He didn't provide results overnight, He didn't seem to answer our prayers as quickly as we thought He should, He didn't do what we needed Him to do in order for us to check the box next to that resolution on the list.

My point here is that God's working in us all is not in a drastic or dramatic way. No, the spiritual growth, the progress of the soul, and the working of the Holy Spirit are all found in the nooks and crannies of life. Regarding growth, Jeremiah 29:11 tells us “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Here we are promised that God is working on us, with us, and through us to make an impact on the world. He has plans for us, yes, but it is often not the same plan that we think it should be. Instead, the progression and development of His working in and through us can be found when you choose to help someone reach something at the grocery store, it is when you choose to smile at someone who is having a sour day, it is when you reach out to someone who went through a loss rather than staying silent, it is when you listen instead of talk, when you forgive someone who hurt you instead of trying to hurt them back, it is in the tone you take when you interact with others. These are all seemingly little moments that are heavily influenced by the Holy Spirit. These are all examples of when He directed you toward the light and you chose to listen, to represent the love of the Lord, and to help someone else without any expectations back. No, God does not walk around and tell you what to do, point out with a neon sign the right way, or shout from the sidelines to coach you. Instead, He softly guides us, He catches us when we are off guard and gives us a chance to grow. These seemingly small, dismissible acts are where the most progress is found.

Our resolutions with God take a lifestyle change, not a brief flurry of January faith. And I think this is inspiring, right? Instead of the fear of burnout, the inevitable temptation to return to waiting for the 'right time' for a change, and the exhaustion that overtakes us when we get overwhelmed with all the unfamiliar things in our lives, we can cling to the nooks and crannies of our day to day. We are reminded in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” This verse squashes any doubt that God does not hear our prayers, that we are going through hardships alone and for no reason, and that God is not working in us. It reminds us where God is working and for what purpose. It reminds us that choosing God and looking for Him and focusing on Him in the quiet moments, in the ones that no one else notices, and in the challenging times makes a difference. They add up, and they shape who we are as people and as children of God, and they remind us to focus on what is unseen. When we approach the ways we want to be better children of God, understanding that it is in the places we usually overlook, can help us appreciate the step-by-step of progress. Any progress is good progress. And quickly we find that our focus on the Lord has brought us a great deal further than we could have ever made it on our own.

Our resolutions with God might be on a different line than the other resolutions we have planned for this year. However, I hope the ones related to the Lord are at the top. Prioritizing the Lord and the finding of Him in every single nook and cranny in our day-to-day changes our lifestyle, allows us to focus on the step-by-step of progress, and encourages us to remain faithful even when we feel as though we are failing in our attempts to change. The fear of burnout, the unease of fleeting motivation, can be put to rest when we look at Psalm 55:22. It tells us to “Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken.” We are reminded here that God is with us, He is working in and on us, and that we will find inspiration every single time we go to the Lord. He will allow us to see progress, to focus on the nitty-gritty, and to remain faithful through turbulence. The progress we make when we seek God's glory in the nooks and crannies of our lives is the best and most long-lasting form of growth in our soul!

Quick note from Shannon, the author: Thanks so much for following Sonshine Lane into the New Year! If you are new to the Sonshine Lane community, welcome aboard and we look forward to hearing your feedback on our articles. I would love to introduce myself to you and either learn more about you or catch up; drop me a note from the main page of the blog (sonshinelane.com). If you have been following for awhile, I want to say thank you! Your continued support means the world to me! Don't forget to follow Sonshine Lane on Instagram and Facebook to keep up with the articles and share with your friends and families! God bless and see you next week!