fresh start

Last week after a day or two of settling in I met with a couple girls for lunch who have been accountability partners for me over the last year+. We had a great lunch together of catching up and reflecting a little. One of them said something that has stuck in my brain a little bit. Then a few days later, the other one followed up with another little nugget. Here's the goods, maybe it'll encourage you the way it's encouraged me.

The first one was just encouraging me to see this return home as a fresh start. This conversation came about because I had admitted to being stressed as to how to fit a post-Guatemala Katie into the pre-Guatemala Katie-life. Does that make sense? She equated it with your freshman year of college where you can be whomever you want to be, it's truly a fresh start. She encouraged me not to put pressure on myself to fit everything back into my time that was there before. Obviously my priorities are different now and there's definitely some juggling of the others that needs to happen.

So, I began to chew on that after our lunch. And of course, the overwhelmingness (is that a word? probably not) of it all came flooding in. I need to get my Arbonne business back to where it was and quick, I need to arrange coffee's and lunches with everyone that I miss or that I've kept in contact with so we can catch up, I need to figure out my running schedule so that I can get back into that, I need to get my house perfectly arranged especially with so many visitors, I need to get back in touch with all my girls that I have mentored so that we can reconnect now that I'm back, and the list kept growing and growing as I struggled with what should be priority or not. How could this be a fresh start if I jam everything back in?

Then came the call from the other accountability friend. She just wanted to encourage me to be careful with the expectations I put on myself as I begin my fresh start. She really took a big fat chisel out and got it down to the necessary: my expectation should be only Jesus. The reminder of that makes my shoulders relax about four inches. It's really that simple. Jesus. He was there before I left, He was certainly there while in Guatemala, and He's more than ready to be my fresh start.