Irresistible

Irresistible: too powerful or convincing to be resisted.

Every New Years Eve, we pick a word to define the months ahead.  Maybe it's an ambitious word, or a refreshing one. Sometimes it's a word that we hope for more of in the year to come, other times it's what we feel we finally discovered in the year gone by. Whatever it is, whether we have picked it long before the clock strikes midnight, or it's just something we fancy in the moment as we pop the champagne, we write the word on the mirror in the entry way and hope that it becomes our mantra for the next 365 days. 

As 2016 came to an end, and 2017 popped on the scene with its gusto, and guts, grace, and gruel, the word I could not shake was irresistible. And maybe if you were in the new year, new you state of mind, you could consider that a resolution of sorts. To create a me that's irresistible could have been my goal for the year. But that's not why the word hung around. As 2016 came to a close and 2017 began...I know God was calling me to stop resisting. With the strike of midnight, I resolved to let go of the clutches I had held tight to my plans with and let go for minute. I was tired of swimming an upstream battle and tired of clinging on for dear life to a world that was not even what God desired for me. In 2017 I became a girl who found not only an irresistibly loving God, but one who's plans for me are faithful and true the second I stop resisting them.

My irresistible year held more highs and lows than I could ever see coming. And despite my resolve to resist less, I started January resisting heavily the love of a new puppy. A heart that was afraid to risk loving something that could not live forever, stood cold, and stubborn, and alone. But 2017 was irresistible, and I gave into love. 

In February, my health became my irresistible moment. Normally terrified of all things medical, I faced what could have been a frightening diagnosis with ease and hope and a certain peace I had not known before. 

I recall hugs early in 2017, and gentle voices that told me to trust God in the midst of all the heartache. I remember people saying, He has to be working here. I still hear people asking what on earth He could be doing. At New Year's Day Mass, God told me to come home to a place, that felt to me, in so many ways empty and unwelcoming.  I remember wondering how God could want this all to be. I could not see how this wild beginning to 2017 could ever bring anything that God desired.

In March, I thought I had hit rock bottom when a meeting that was meant to fix everything left me more broken then ever. I cried my eyes out that night thinking I'd blown my last chance. But God is faithful, and so am I, so despite the agony, I did my best not to resist His plans for me.

I remember the day I let go of the fight I alone was not going to win. I wrestled with God for months before that. He literally had to hold me down so I could stop resisting. In pure exhaustion, I raised my white flag.

And then, just as the flowers start to bloom in spring, I started to see life again. I started to see the life that being irresistible brought to me. All of a sudden, the winter was over and the sadness was gone. All of a sudden, God was moving, arranging, and bringing things together in ways I never saw coming. All of a sudden, I was living a life more exciting and unexpected than I could have dreamed. All of a sudden, I was free of resisting.

2017 ended with the most insane four months of my life. It's crazy to think that only a few months ago, I never saw them coming and yet I'm ever so thankful that they did. I student taught, took on a new role at work, and grew to find within myself a courage and strength I did not know I had. New people became important people in my world.  New stories filled my days. New responsibilities became mine. I did not even know I desired it all, but here God stood saying He desired it for me. 

At Christmas Eve Mass, time stood still as I received another hug, right there in the midst of the home I'd been returning to every Sunday for the whole year from cold and lonely until now. As I looked around at the familiar faces that were so perfectly my family, and so perfectly a summation of my 2017, I heard these words whispered in my ear, "can you believe it...can you believe all that God did in a year?!" To which my reply was this, He is faithful. I beamed with pride as I rejoiced in our God who is so good. But more than that I found joy in knowing that this year, I gave Him the final say and stopped resisting, and in that I found Him moving more profoundly than ever before. 

2017 held heartache and hope for the ages, and I guess that's what I discovered about being irresistible.  It's full of both, just as Jesus is. Why hope for a world where He exists, when we can know it? 2017... you were simply irresistible.