The Right Places in the New Year

He’s doing it again.

Jack, our dog, sits on my lap pulling away from my arms, teetering toward tipping off because he’s busy sniffing the air. He wants to go wherever his nose will take him. Up onto my writing desk. Off on a new adventure. Straight into the trash basket in the kitchen. Head inside, feet kicking in the air. Well, not really. But he has pulled the entire three-foot-tall basket down onto the floor. And this is a twelve-pound pup we’re talking here. *grin*

He noses into dirty laundry piles, up trees (yes, he climbs trees), into the trash. This mini-Dachsie is completely ruled by his amazing sense of smell. Forever pulling on the reins as if he knows better what to get into than we know what to keep him out of.

Okay. That reminds me of someone… Me. I’ve been known to follow my senses and end up in places I shouldn’t be. It feels like the right time, the right place for me. But it isn’t. I’m just getting ahead of myself, getting ahead of where God wants me to be.

Why do we do that?

We have a need for attention. We want to go places and get noticed. But the only kind of attention we’re going to get if we’re naïvely somewhere we shouldn’t be is negative.

We want affirmation, to prove our value. Uh, God gives that freely and it’s never meritorious. We don’t have to do. We just have to be.

We want independence. I know what’s best for me, right? Right??

This New Year, I don’t want to be anyplace I’m not supposed to be simply because I forced my way in, followed my senses, took an unsanctioned initiative. I want to be where God wants me to be, to “bloom” there, and to follow Him to the next place, or be content if we linger. Being with Him is all that matters.

Oh, the lessons He’s teaching me through my pup, who has now settled into a tight circle under the blanket on my lap, sighed contentedly, and drifted off to sleep. Time to go curl up in God’s lap.

Happy New Year!