A warm welcome to today’s Guest Blogger, Carla Winner. Catholic Coach, Counselor and Mom of two littles, Carla shares the excitement and butterflies that come with NEW THINGS. Sit back, relax, and listen as we share and cultivate how God moves in and through us as we navigate the many different seasons of a woman’s life.

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“Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” Isaiah 43:18-19

As the mornings began to cool off, producing dew on the grass and falling leaves, earlier than usual, I felt the shift of September coming. Our summer bucket lists were being checked off. The end of the summer activities were occurring like those last-minute stops to the county fair and folding and putting away the new clothes for school. But something was shifting in our home. There was an energy of excitement building, uncertainty, and some anxiety.

As days passed, backpacks were packed with school supplies, lunches were made and books about the First day of school were being read the night before. As I tucked my son into his Super Mario bed he repeated something he’d been saying, practically all summer,

“I can’t go to first grade, I don’t know what it looks like.” 

As I tried to remind him of all the good things he did know about school, like some of his friends in his class, and that he actually did see the classroom and met his teacher, I knew that his anxiety was less about the actual look of the room, but the uncertainty that something new brings.

He’d be moving into a new classroom, but also with it new lessons to learn, new expectations, new challenges that he could not see coming, and anything else that just felt like a question mark. Although I tried to encourage him with all the knowns and also that once he was there he’d feel better, I also thought of something I heard recently. “You can be both scared and brave at the same time.”

With all that was building inside of me, I realized, this resonated with me too. Although my children were the ones starting school, my son again in his second year and my daughter starting for the first time, this also meant that I, after 6 and half years, was no longer a full-time stay-at-home mom. Now my part-time job could grow and the possibilities were feeling endless and exciting, yet unknown and downright scary. All the ‘what ifs’ began to enter my mind. I just didn’t know what this season would “look like.” I really wish I did, but after being a tedious planner all my life, I knew no one could really know what was ahead.

“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” Jeremiah 29:11

This time of year always seems to bring up feelings of a new and fresh start. Maybe it’s the seasons changing or that memory of being in school and starting something new this time of year. When I was in college we learned about some of the jobs we could someday go into in the fashion industry and one was called a Fashion Forecaster. The job entailed studying fashion trends in the past and watching for what was coming to predict what would be in the next season. This was needed by many to make sure Buyers made the right choices and they also would try to forecast past sales and sales trends to see what worked in the past year and what may work for the next. My young, perfectionist, 18-year-old heart longed to be able to study enough of the past to be able to foretell the future.

Although I never became a fashion forecaster I did try to perfect the best way to forecast the future. I’d try to do all I could to do the next right thing, and not just for the sake of morals or faithful reasons, but for the certainty, for control, and hitting a stage of perfectionism that isn’t attainable on this side of heaven. The truth is when we go to this place of striving without God, but with a closed fist of wanting control, we fall farther from our place of calling and purpose. If we are people of faith we cannot sit on both sides. We can’t thrive in a place of fear. Those longings for control, knowledge, or perfectionism are propelled by fear. One of the reasons I so longed for my son to not be afraid of school, was that I did not want him to miss out on having a great experience or seeing his new beginning for what it really was or what it could be for him.

Father God is speaking this to us, too. He longs for us to be able to sit with Him or perhaps run with Him on the side of: Fear but perseverance, Fear but trust, Fear but hope. We cannot know the future, but when I humble myself down to pray and look up to God I can see that He is trustworthy, He can show me the next step, maybe not the next 15 steps like I wish, but simply, the next one. Or perhaps He’ll tell me to rest and sit with Him for a while.

I want to encourage you if you are in a season of a “New thing” and you feel fear coming up in you, to stop for a minute and pray each time you feel it. Ask God for the humility and strength it takes to trust Him first and yourself second. To listen more than talk. To surrender your plans. To look back not to forecast your future or beat yourself up over the past, but to remember who held your hand through it, who made a way in the darkness, and to steep yourself in the hope that can come from looking at the past triumphs you had through the sufferings.

“For with God nothing will be impossible.” Luke 1:37

Getting to the Root of Change and helping you LOVE the season of life you’re in.

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