Waiting in my pew to head toward the alter for communion, I prayed to God that I would receive a star word that would help me “grow in my faith.” I didn’t look at the star until I returned to my seat. My 2024-star word was grow.
Immediately, I got super organized. I assigned a monthly spiritual category that would serve as my prayer focus. January, grow in trust. February, grow in patience and so on. It’s a practice that actually lasted several months. However, as summer rolled around, I began to realize that my well-meaning plan, while not without its benefits, gave me far too much control (a revelation likely planted by the Holy Spirit). Typical Cindy, wanting to fix the problem, take charge and find the answers.
We hear all the time how trials offer a potential for growth. The key for me, I realized, was in letting go of the outcomes and lessons I felt I needed to learn and instead asking, and actually trusting the Holy Spirit to guide me. I’m a pretty impulsive person, and so I realized I couldn’t just tell myself I needed to do this; I had to be deliberate. I do credit the prayer time spent on that initial list with preparing me for the shift.
Ever so slowly, in times of anxiety, stress, indecision, fear and disappointment, I started whispering either out loud or in my mind, “Come Holy Spirit. Come Holy Spirit.” And then trusted (tried to anyway) that guidance, immediate or delayed, would come.
It has been a bit of a game changer for me.
I’m not where I need to be or where I want to be. But the word was grow, not gain, and I now understand He sets the pace for progress, not me.
“Come Holy Spirit.”
Cindy Carter