Travel to Europe.
Learn to dive.
Sing professionally.
Have a Martha Stewart home.
Write a book.
Wear a Wonderbra.

I’m a big list-maker. I love me a good list. Sometimes, when I’m feeling overwhelmed, just the act of writing everything I need to do on a list relieves my stress. Seeing my life in words – accompanied by bullets, glorious bullets – is enough for me.

So it’s no surprise that, back in high school, I made a list of the things I’d like to accomplish in my life. In case you’re wondering, the lofty goals above are just a few of the items I have not yet accomplished.

What’s funny about this list – and for the record, I actually have two, one dated 1996 and another I believe was written a couple years later – is that I can look at the things I wrote down and acknowledge just how ridiculous some of them are.

But that doesn’t stop me from still wanting to do them or expecting myself to accomplish them.

Learn to dance, travel to New York City, earn a doctorate degree, solve a mystery. These are things I still think I could – and perhaps should – do. (Yes, solve a mystery. After reading and watching, literally, hundreds of suspense novels and cop/detective shows, a small – delusional – part of me believes I could do it. I mean, really, with the help of a good crime lab, who couldn’t?)

I know. It’s ridiculous. But it’s who I am.

And it’s who I’m not. At least for now. When I look at those lists, or even my 2009 Goals (also known as resolutions, but I call them goals because “resolutions” is so cliché), I see the person I want to be, the life I want to live. I see potential and possibility.

When I look in the mirror, though, I don’t always see that potential. And it’s those times that I have to remind myself that God’s not finished with me yet.

I may have gone to my class reunion overweight and still reeling from the news that I would soon be losing my job. I may have started a family before finishing my master’s degree and establishing a career, any career. And I may have a layer of dust insulating my entire house, the tiny house that is not as nice or new as any of my friends’.

But I’m still here. I’m still breathing. And God’s still working out His plan for me.

Because I am a work in progress.

“He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6)

Originally posted on March 26, 2009, at InProgress.

This is something I’ve learned – and have to keep learning! For more lessons learned, visit Musings of a Housewife.

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This