In this season, I’ve been in my first serious dating relationship. It has been such a journey to navigate a cross-cultural relationship and to figure out how to do that on the field, away from family and my organization’s leadership. Not to mention the normal emotional roller-coaster of being in a new relationship!

I, like most women, want to figure out everything before it happens. I want to know what will happen next week, next month, next year. I’ve had to wrestle with that a lot in this situation. It’s scary to think of all the changes that could come, and I can so easily exchange the joy of the present for the fear of the future. 

Brene Brown talks about an emotion called “foreboding joy,” the feeling when things are so good that something bad must be just around the corner. You aren’t really able to enjoy the good because of a fear of what “might” or “could” come. 

If we are always looking to the future and what could happen, or to the past and what did happen, we often miss the joy of the moment we are in. Sometimes our present is difficult and we’re in trying seasons, but God gives us little moments of joy to celebrate in the midst of these times, if we will choose to see what He is doing. 

Let’s make it our aim to enjoy, “to take joy in”, the present, with all of its unknowns. This requires trusting and taking hope that God has a good plan for our lives and futures, no matter what may come.