FORWARD

2 a: strongly inclined : ready b: lacking modesty or reserve : brash
4: moving, tending, or leading toward a position in front ; also : moving toward an opponent's goal

Perhaps more than most people, I have a tendency towards reflection. While this can be a good thing because it helps me assess my life and stay focused on my broader goals, it also can result in looking backwards in regret too often. I've been working on some fiction writing lately and have written a few pieces about a character. As I've envisioned who she is and where she's going, I see her life initially having paths of creativity and practicality that are intertwined. But I think there will come a point where she must choose between the two paths. The paths will join up together again years later and instead of choosing to turn back and try the path she missed the first time, she'll turn forward because we can't ever really go back.

I'm trying very hard right now to turn forward. I feel like I can see a curve coming in the road ahead, but I have no idea whether there will be one large, clear and attractive path awaiting me, or a plethora of paths that aren't clearly marked, with several promising lovely scenery along the way. Either way, the curve in the road will only come in time and it will come whether I spend the intervening time striding towards it or digging my heels in and look back.

In trying to stride forward, I am occasionally limping along. Thursday, I went to a new group focused on exploring your God-given creativity. It's a small group of nine women and I only know one other woman. She's a friend that I asked to join me because I thought it would be fun to do this with her and get to know her better through this. It helped to have her there beside me on Thursday, but even as I prepared to leave for the meeting, I was questioning whether I should do this... perhaps for good reason, as I had plenty of moments to elicit questions:

My babysitter called about two minutes after she was supposed to arrive to tell me she was running late. I had not left myself a lot of lead time and knew the drive would take me a while. Even if she had been just five minutes late, I would not have been on time. As it was, she was more than twenty minutes away. I ended up asking my next door neighbor to hang out with the girls until the sitter showed up. Luckily, he agreed and I left about twenty minutes after I had planned. Then, I hit traffic from an earlier wreck on the interstate, making the drive time even longer.

Throughout all of this, I tried to calm my heart. I had avoided thinking much about this group prior to Thursday night because thinking about it only made me nervous. These obstacles in my path caused all of my insecurities to flare up and I thought as I drove, "My first impression to these women will be terrible! I'm going to be late to the very first meeting!" To make matters worse, I didn't have a phone number for the hostess, so I couldn't call in advance to explain my tardiness.

The meeting itself went fine and I left feeling more intimidated about the task of examining my heart than by the women in the group. My first assignment is to create an invitation to myself for joining the group. An invitation from God. I think part of the invitation will be inviting me to move forward without letting fear hold me back.