I’m 51 and don’t feel grown into my shoes…
I know, weird statement, but hear me out, this is how my brain thinks thoughts…
I always reflect on my birthday… this year has been a unique one for sure… full of unbelievable highs and earth shaking lows…
I was thinking about how we take a lot of days, years…heck, life in general for granted…I always try to remind others we are here on purpose for a purpose… God places us in a time, for a time… and the journey begins…
So I got to thinking about walking out this path that’s been laid out before us, sure we detour, take some wrong turns, get hung up on certain hills, but the path has been laid out for us, again, on purpose for a purpose… we don’t always know or feel what that is, but walk it out in faith…
Then I got to thinking about shoes and how we need different shoes for different activities ( like beach walking versus mountain climbing)
I got to thinking about our shoes from childhood. You remember, the new shoes that your mom would buy that were just a touch too big, because she knew you’d eventually grow into them? I can remember thinking they looked cool, but felt stiff and sometimes hard to walk in until they were broken in a bit. Maybe the heel slipped up and down a little or your toes would slide to the front… we don’t walk as confidently when it seems our shoes could fall off or not support us quite enough to run like we used to in our old comfortable broken in shoes.
Maybe we are unsure of the new style… what will the other kids think or worse “say” about them?
To make things more difficult, maybe we are wearing these shoes in new territory, like a new school, or new sport, or a scary situation that didn’t go so well…
I think in the journey of following our path in our adult life, we reach places where the path seems smooth and our shoes feel appropriate… and then it’s as if we find our feet in places we’ve never been -wearing shoes we don’t feel comfortable in or trust just yet… we make it through to the other side and find we’ve gained wisdom and strength we hadn’t had before and we start to feel comfortable in those shoes that have now been broken in… we’ve grown in to them!
The path will eventually bring us to another place of growing and we may find ourselves once again having to learn how to navigate the new terrain in a new pair of “shoes”. Sometimes the new terrain is easy and we’re walking through things we’ve hoped for… yet other times we are navigating dark shadowy terrain, looking in disbelief where we find our feet these days…
We must push through, we will gain new strength and wisdom by the time we get to the other side of it… we will have grown again and gained more confidence for the next parts of the path…
So if you’ve stayed with me through all of these rambling thoughts… thanks, and if you find your feet where you least expected them, wearing shoes you don’t trust yet… me too, friend… me too. But we just have to keep walking by faith, trusting in the One who has put us on this path on purpose for a purpose …He’s gotten us this far, and he’s even given us special shoes as part of our spiritual armor to wear…let’s just take one step at a time and see where the path leads us next.
