I am less than a month from my final year in my twenties and I have been gathering my last goals for this decade, squeezing them into summer plans and I am knuckling down.  I am setting word goals and mile goals and we are preparing to shift, too.  We are all looseness right now, living in a small adorable house, playing when we want,  leaving when we want, spending time in the kitchen creating meals, piling the entry with bicycles, letting the closet grow and grow and grow.  And I recognize that we are blessed.

I've caught myself in the last couple days wandering around inside, picking through memories, reviewing my evolution, frowning at slow growth, clapping with Him over great progresses.  I have vacillated between confidence and a large urgency to pick up the pace.  I am one minute restored and the next destroyed.  We talked it over in small group-- the lie that we believe about ourselves, the goodness we see inside that isn't our own.  And I was brought back to Paul.  To his bold words, Follow me as I follow Christ and then to his great confession, Of sinners, I am chief.

Always, Paul is tension for me.  Always, he is saying words I have only dared read, never say.  And so I am knuckling down.  I am rooting myself here and I am tightening up.  In April I will turn 29 and I will write fifty thousand words.  In June we will ride one hundred fifty miles in one day.  But those are small.  There is something larger He is stirring inside, something slow growing and strong.  There is Paul's letter.  There is The Spirit.  And somewhere along the way, hopefully, there will be me- the sinner of sinners and a great follower of Christ.