NEXT

What if Next is not something to brace for…but something to collaborate with?

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There are little dayparts drawn into my calendar, parsed into bite-sized encounters that give the illusion that I have control.

This week, the boundary lines blurred, like water splattering on ink.

Next washed over me with a passion, a tumbledown of a body in distress. Before I was ready. Or at least before I thought I was.

Pain arrived in places that had been quiet. Treatment responded [and didn’t] in ways I did not anticipate. The instinct was to fight through. To hold the line. To outrun whatever Next was unfolding.

And then something quieter emerged.
What if this is not about power but personhood?

 What comes without warning doesn’t ask for my consent.
It simply arrives.
But that doesn’t mean surrender.
Or even agreement to what is.

Next is not something I passively wait for.
It is something I enter, something I transform because of who I am.

This is a very different energy from, “I will not let this define me.” This is a belief that I will shape the encounter by the quality of my presence. “I will define it.”

 What does Next become when it meets me? This is the supernatural exchange that opens the floodgates of what can be.

Our Creator doesn’t “decide” who he is going to be in the moment.
He simply “is.” I am struck by the power of this divine quality of Character—
who we are without thought or manipulation, without molding ourselves to the moment but forming that moment by who we are.

I ask myself, who do you imagine Next meeting —
what quality in you do you most trust?
Steadiness?
Creativity?
Clarity?
Tenderness?
Courage?
Intuition?

The answer comes without thinking:
Personhood. Knowing who I am.

Not:
“I control what happens.”
But:
“What happens will encounter someone whose character is intact.”

Not:
“What must I release?”
But:
“What remains when nothing else holds?”

Somewhere along the way I fixed my focus on how Next will shape me.
But this is only half of the equation. And, perhaps, the more compelling consideration is how I will shape it.

Not through force.
But through the integrity of who I am when it arrives.

Next has a mind of its own. But so do I.

Next will teach me. But it will also reveal me.
And that is the part that feels holy, even mystical somehow.

God’s character is not situational. It does not fluctuate with outcomes. It simply is. Is mine?

I cannot predict the Next. But I can promise that what arrives will encounter someone intact—
Not perfect.
Not fearless.
But integrated.

Next is not a verdict. It is an encounter, a collaboration with God’s Universe.
And it is asking me…and you…to see ourselves as necessary to what will ultimately transpire.

NOTES

Next is coming whether you are prepared for it or not.
You are not passive in its arrival. You are integral to what transpires.
Ask yourself:
• When Next walks into the room, who do you want it to meet?
• What quality in you do you hope remains, regardless of what arrives?
• What are you afraid Next will reveal about you?
• What are you secretly hoping it will confirm?
• If Next is not here to undo you but to uncover you, what shifts?
• What part of you is ready to be seen — not by others — but by yourself?

And then perhaps the most destabilizing question:

• If you stopped trying to manage what comes next, what would you become available to?

Hi, Next—
I’ve been expecting you.
Not with fear, but with the anticipation that you have come to reveal something in me that will make me smile.
May I meet you in a way that proves the woman I have become — one who has known disruption and still believes there is something within her that can bend this hard moment toward good. Because I love you—jk