with a capital P

I was standing in the shower sometime last week or something when a song popped in my head.

I am a promise! I am a possibility! I am a promise! With a capital P! I am a great big bundle of POTENTIALITY! And i am learning to hear God's voice, and i am trying to make the right choice. I am a possibility! Anything God wants me to be!

If you didn't sing this song when you were a little girl (or boy), google "i am a promise song" for some fun you tube videos of children i don't know, singing it.  :)  Adorable.

Are you ready for some sappy blogging?  Here it is.

Today i turned 37.  I have not been looking forward to this birthday.  I have been passive aggressively NOT looking forward to it for a little while now.  It's like that number that tips me over the edge from being "in my thirties," to being "in my late thirties," which when i'm feeling a little discouraged about my age-to-goals-reached ratio, quickly turns into a big bad FOUR ZERO, three years way too early.

In my mind anyway.

Ironically, i have forever been a proponent of encouragements like it's-never-too-late and forty's-the-new-twenty-five and you're-only-seventy.  I'm a hopeless optimist.  I've told you that.

And on the whole, i really do believe those things.  Even when i'm depressed about becoming nearly almost the new twenty-five, i know in my optimistic heart that i'm not even seventy yet, and God can do whatever He wants to do with my life at any age, and that i can NOT live by someone else's life plan, but i must follow God's plan for my life, step by step, like David's "lamp unto my feet."  One lit step at a time.

But even while squinting at those sometimes dimly lit steps, i'm dreaming of the big picture i imagine God must have for me and getting impatient when my single steps don't seem to be leading there.

Then God, yes it was definitely God, dropped this children's song in my head.

"i am learning to hear God's voice....trying to make the right choice..."

That's definitely not just for children.

"Anything God wants me to be."

Did i forget to keep believing that?  Maybe so.  Do i really think that God is so small that He can be limited by something like my age?!  Human idiocy must be getting involved here.

"I am a promise."

Is this God telling me that, like my dear (older that me) friend told me today, "you're just a baby?"

I certainly feel like a baby, wisdom-wise.  Lost in this big ole world wise.

Potential-wise?

It's funny how sometimes God challenges my optimism by disappointing it a little and letting me see whether i still trust Him to do the best for me.  And in that He gave me so much hope.  Because He knows me better than i know myself.

How do we get tricked into the notion that God wants all of us to be famous evangelists or uncomfortably rich business men?  What if "anything He wants me to be" right now is an honest clerk?  It was a shoe salesman who converted the guy who converted the guy who converted Billy Graham (or something like that i heard).  Why do we minimize God and think that He does miracles only in our human idea of success?  And why do i think i have to have a Billy Graham level example to demonstrate my point?  I'm still missing it.  Why do we underestimate the amazing power of the faithful day by day love of God?  Isn't that where He really demonstrates Himself to the every day person?

I'm trailing off a little now.

But what if what He really wants from me is just to keep writing honest blog posts about my daily life, even when it isn't pretty?  What if that's how He wants to demonstrate Himself?  And i decided that because i'm 37 and my life doesn't look like the imagination i had in my head, that i miss the chance to witness His greatness in the absolutely mundane?

A preacher i used to know used to talk about how the biggest miracle of all is that God can be the most powerful entity anywhere and still hide Himself.

What if i'm looking for Him in all the wrong places?

He still thinks i'm a promise.

And He made me.  So He knows.

So i'm going to start looking for Him in the dimly little one-steps-at-a-time.  Again.

And right now, this almost the new twenty five bundle of potentiality is going to go to bed, because it's getting late, and the old twenty five bundle of potentiality handled short nights better than the new one.