Lately, I keep marveling at the difference a year makes.

A year ago, I was just waking up from my post-Paris coma. I was jobless, completely without Fort Worth friends and secretly hell-bent on a New York City move. I was unbelieveably lonely (but too independent to admit it) and couldn’t get out of Fort Worth fast enough. Then last February, I looked up to discover that new, unexpected people had made this city home all over again.   

I believe that if we pay attention to what’s happenning in our lives and ask God to show us, there are words and themes to the seasons of our lives that describe what He is doing in and through us. The past few years, I’ve had seasons of learning and growing, of both adventure and sitting still, of redemption and restoration, independence and dependence. Lately though, I’ve felt a new word rising up and singing its song all over my life.

 Investment.

In so many different ways, investment.

Investment in new people.

Investment in new relationships.

 

Investment in the ventures and adventures friends are taking.

{Re}investment in a familiar city.

{Continued} investment in the gifts carved into me.

{Unstoppable} investment from the One who is forever invested in me.

Sometimes, I get so fixated on where I am in this exact moment that I don’t allow myself to remember all the changes I’ve walked through and therefore, all the changes that wait ahead. No season, whether sweet or bittersweet, stays forever. I forget that and in doing so, allow the lie of this is it, this is forever to travel and flow through my thinking.

But lately, even in the midst of those traps, every time that I leave an evening full of new faces or an afternoon of baby cuddling or a phone call from across the country – I feel the glory of investment bouncing off those encounters, vibrating inside me like a plucked guitar string and singing to me the sweet song of this season. 

Here’s the catch: investment requires things of you: time, vulnerability, risk, patience, willingness to step in, say yes and ask questions. Investment is work – it’s sometimes being the first to text or call, it’s opening up your time, it’s being willing to share who you are and listen while others do the same, it’s staying put despite a few moments of silence and the uncertainty of what to say next – but not one of those costs comes close to equaling the payoffs. And after a fall and winter of questions and lonlieness and doubt, I’ve found myself here, navigating criss-crossed channels of lives and places that become a little more known, a little more beloved every week. The investment of this spring and summer has been, and continues to be, a great, refreshing gift.

And it’s all just an echo of the investment that God actively makes in our lives – every day, every moment.  He’s tugging me away from individual, independent pursuits and back to the truth that life is really about Him and others and that all the rest is background details. His movement and investment tips me, like an overflowing glass, into the lives of others, ultimately bringing me back to him to be filled again because it’s all so satisfying and filling.

If I had to guess, a year ago today, the word of the season was regroup – or maybe, wrestle or ask or wait. But today, I’m so thankful that, as promised, things have changed and that, at least for now, it all seems to be about investment.