The comfy chair

I tend to be a play-it-safe kind of gal. (Did I just say "gal"? Good grief. I have never in my life referred to myself as a "gal". It must be from turning 40 or something.) I don't like taking risks, and I tend to resist change. When I find my comfort zone, I curl up in a cozy little corner and park it. It is there where I feel safe and secure and where I am quite content to stay, thank-you-very-much. Stepping outside of the box is not the norm for me, so when I feel the urge to do just that, it is usually God and not me doing the urging. He knows me well enough that once I find my comfy place I will likely stay there, so in order to get me to move He needs to make me uncomfortable. My comfy chair needs to get a little lumpy.

I don't much like that. Not at the time anyway.

But I have seen God use this technique enough times in my life that I am beginning to recognize it...and the wisdom behind it. To move me in the direction where He wants me to go, He often needs to broaden my horizons and open my field of vision. And in turn, I need to be open to seeing things differently than I have been used to seeing them. I need to envision something new, or the possibility of something new happening in my life.

I think I'm in that place again.

I've been wondering about something lately. If you have a passion about something, I mean you really love it, should you follow your heart and step outside of the box and do something with it? Or sometimes do we have passions for something just for the sheer enjoyment of it, and nothing more? Of course I'm not talking about something harmful or sinful, but just something that you love to do. Maybe you even have the potential to become good at it. How do you know if you are meant to do more with it?

This is just something I have been pondering. And wondering if the career I am currently in is what I am supposed to be doing for the next 25 years...or even the next 5 years. I have been in the same career field since graduating from college. But in this past year I have experienced some changes in my job that have brought me way outside my comfort zone, and at times my comfy chair got quite prickly. In fact, a couple times I found myself without a place to sit at all. And I began to wonder if I had made a mistake in taking the career path that I did.

But lately I am seeing things a bit differently. More clearly perhaps. I hope. Instead of looking at it as a mistake, maybe it is a means to an end that I cannot see right now. A path along the journey that God is taking me down that does not look like I anticipated. It's not a smooth and hazard free path, like I keep requesting from Him. Eh-hem. Rather, it is requiring me to put on my hiking boots, face some challenges, and build some muscles that are a little flabby. It is requiring me to have faith in my Guide, who knows the way and will lead me in the right direction - to the destination that He has chosen for me.

I just need to be willing to give up the comfy chair for a while. And let God expand my horizons.

"I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them." Isaiah 42:16