After Midnight

I'm a horrible sleeper. It's a pity really, because I used to be good at it and I really enjoy it. I'm not sure when, but somewhere along the road I adopted my father’s ease to startle at feint sounds and my mother and grandmother’s insomnia.

I woke up at 3 last night. Some might cringe, but for someone who never sleeps through the night, 3 am allows me the opportunity to go back to sleep before work. I will usually lie in bed for about an hour until I finally fall back to sleep. I've started to use this time productively by talking to God in these midnight hours and honestly, I tend to surrender a lot more at these hours.

I was exercising the same practice last night as I waited to go back to sleep. In the last month I've really been stirred to consider a romantic relationship. God revealed through some friends this was an area in my life we need to work on if for no other reason, just so I don't have this dead broken part of me. Honestly, I did have this dead area and I didn't even know it was there.

I was fine with being single. Did I want something? Sure, doesn't everyone, but I somehow thought wanting that made me want God less. I thought this way for a long time, but it was twisted thinking and my mind is being renewed.

I have never really prayed about a husband, therefore I really never heard anything about him. Last night I was talking to God about this mind renewal and in there I asked "What will my husband be like?" and he answered "Like me."

I've been rolling that around all day. I was so moved by the word. “He will be like me”...everything is in that statement. Hope, truth, promise, and everything I really need to know while waiting.

I don't expect anyone to really understand how deep that word is for me. My friend Sarah gave this line of sight analogy where her moral of the story was her husband reflected Jesus and took her closer to Jesus than she could there on her own. From that moment on, I’ve prayed for only that. To hear the answer I heard last night – that's all I need to know.

I was texting with my great friend Will tonight about our “Overarching Goals for 2011.” He sent me his and I, of course in response thought, “Hmmmm, well what’s my overarching goal?” I heard the still small voice echo the word I’d been rolling around every time I thought of the blog this week, “Work.” This year I'm going to work harder than I ever have before. I’m taking classes at Wave Leadership College; I start ‘Winning with People’ by John Maxwell on Tuesday. I’m doing some post-production video work at my church and I am learning a ton! I work hard at my job, and as I get more time and experience under my belt the greater my work load becomes. I am still concentrating and focused on my health; and somehow it dawned on me if I am really going to write books to inspire a generation I actually have to write. Believe it or not, writing can be hard work. It's going to be good though. There will be a different look to next year, because this year is marked with easy hard yards if that makes any sense; a hand to plow year with tangible results.

The revelations I’ve had in the last month have only left me with more room to expand. I’m working and growing this year. Maybe my overarching goal is, Health? Health takes conscious effort; health grows you and requires your work. For the first time I can see the parts of body, mind, and spirit getting healthy all at the same time, as if they were atoms on different orbits around me and this year they are aligning. It’s encouraging to know all parts of you can prosper. You can change, life does get better and better, and if we all choose to make over arching goals to achieve things which enrich the world around us: we really can be the agents of change that spark a generation to rise up, make their mark, and be known as the one’s who changed everything!