At the beginning of each new year, I have done a yearly Examen (links at the end of this post)–it’s an ancient practice that involves looking back and looking forward, asking myself questions like: where have I seen God at work in my life? When did I feel his absence? What were the highs of last year? What were the lows? What can I change in the coming year to align myself more closely with Christ?
I’ve been reflecting this new year on something that happened exactly 40 years ago, on New Year’s Eve. I call it the night when God intercepted my life.
This is a short article I wrote sometime in the 1990s, remembering that night:
I sat in a crowded auditorium with 17,000 other students in December 1981. In my hand I held a pledge card. I seemed to be watching myself from a distance as I placed a check in the box marked, I believe God is calling me into short-term missions.
Surely this wasn’t really me writing that. I was about to graduate from a prestigious university. I came from a wealthy background. There were many things ahead for me but surely not missions. I had come to Urbana ’81 kicking and screaming. But God had gotten my attention when a staff member with International Teams had spoken on France’s need for missionaries.
As a French major who had spent a semester in France, I knew of the country’s spiritual apathy. This mission offered eight months of training with teammates in Chicago before going to the field for two years. Two years, training and team. Maybe that was a commitment I could make.
I ended up training in Chicago and then flying to France with my four teammates. My friends were all marrying. I was very single, living on a meager salary that I had to raise myself. I left the comfort of being “somebody” in America to becoming “nobody” in France. And I left dear family and friends.
Suddenly I was back in school. Humility 101. No one cared about my posh upbringing or spiritual and academic accolades in the dried up mining town of Firminy, France where I worked. My quick wit was reduced to baby’s babble as I led Bible studies in my floundering French.
But I saw God provide in miraculous ways for my physical, financial and spiritual needs as I trusted Him. I learned how to truly confess sins and confront in love with my team members. I watched the power of prayer overturn Satan’s plans as we cried out to God in many traumatic situations. I saw God use me, with my talents and gifts, to change lives for Him. I felt very rich indeed.
I am now back in France with International Teams as a church-planting missionary. But I am not alone. There was even a marvelous fringe benefit to my short-term experience. I married my handsome, servant-hearted teammate, Paul. Not such a bad deal after all.
Fast forward to December 28, 2021. I was taking a day with the Lord to once again examine these past forty years. And ask the Lord this question: Now what?
Life has surprised us all in 2020 and 2021. The seasons have changed in unpredictable ways globally and individually. As I sat with the ‘Now What’ question, I was pondering the Biola Advent devotional for December 22 (because life happens and I fall behind). Sometimes I like to read the ‘About’ section in the devotions, which gives a brief bio of the poet and artists highlighted for that day. As I read about Antonio Lucio Vivaldi and Gerald Manly Hopkins, here’s what I wrote:
Vivaldi in Vienna, died in poverty
Gerald Manly Hopkins never published a single poem. His friend did that, after Hopkins’ death.
Yet these two men are widely regarded now as the some of the best in their genre.
They did what they were created to do. They composed, they wrote, because they could not not do it. Even if it meant poverty or denying priestly promises.
And today, dear Lord, almost 40 years to the day from when You intercepted my life and called me to another way, I come before You and ask:
Should I keep doing what I’ve been doing for all these years?
I know the answer, at least I think I do.
How can I stop? It is the air I breath to serve You through loving others and to write stories to inspire. Lord, I was doing these two things as a child. My first thought whenever I met another human was of the soul. Did this child know You?
And my first inclination as a child when moved by life or when I wanted to express love to another was through poetry.
So how can I stop what is my very lifeblood and heartbeat?
But still there begs another question, Lord. How?
How do I live in this new now? 40 years later?
Today I am asking, Lord, as I sit out on the new little porch beside the new sunroom with the spring water trickling over the stones, the squirrels scampering through the leaves, and the first cardinal flitting far off on the limbs of an oak tree, shocking red in the midst of all the brown.
Today in that parenthesis of time between Your coming and the New Year, I am also making a parenthesis in my life and seeking to hear You once again. Not that You are ever silent, but lately, Lord, lately life has kept me moving forward, my devotions simply a 10-minute meditation from Lectio 365 and Biola’s Advent Project. Both rich and short, keeping me on track.
But today, I consecrate time to You. Time to sit, like Mary, to treasure up the past, and ponder what the future might be.
I think it not a coincidence that on this day set aside, I listened to these words from Lectio 365:
Again, just like Simeon, Anna shows up just at the right place at the right time! In Alcoholics Anonymous, they say that ‘coincidences are God’s way of being anonymous.’
Jean-Pierre de Caussade says it this way:
‘Those who have abandoned themselves to God always lead mysterious lives and receive from him exceptional and miraculous gifts by means of the most ordinary, natural and chance experiences in which there appears to be nothing unusual.’*
This, Lord, is the testimony of my life, my ‘Yes! Exactly!’ This!
For all my life You have come in the coincidence, the mystery of You loving me in the midst of a normal day when I needed once again to be surprised by Your presence. When a quote from a French theologian interrupts my thoughts and resonates so strongly as I remember that night, forty years ago, when Your Spirit blew across the stadium filled with 17,000 students, and I, manila cardstock in my hands, looked down and checked the box that said Yes.
May you find your ‘Yes’ to the Lord in 2022. Happy New Year!
***If you are interested in prayerfully taking time to look back at 2021 and look forward to 2022 with an Annual Examen, here are a few resources.
The Great Annual Examen by Potter’s Inn
Becky Eldredge’s Annual Examen
Sacred Ordinary Days’ Yearly Examen
ELIZABETH MUSSER writes ‘entertainment with a soul’ from her writing chalet—tool shed—outside Lyon, France. Find more about Elizabeth’s novels at www.elizabethmusser.com and on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and her blog, Letters to the Lord.
Elizabeth Musser 
Such sweet sharing to read what God did in your life- how inspiring that you obeyed. As you describe your surroundings, I wonder if I would have been so willing to leave my comfort.
Thank for the encouragement to review where one is- a reset of sorts- to be still and listen. Another sweet way God uses the body of Christ -with someone sitting in France, for heaven’s sake! ( literally for heaven’s sake😊)
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