A New Word For A New Year
It’s official. 2019 lies behind us and 2020 stretches out wide towards a new horizon. Forget turning the page on the calendar. It’s time to take the old one down and put up something brand new. Many of us mark the New Year with all manners of self-reflection and fresh commitments, as if we can wipe our slates clean of what last year leaves behind and start from scratch. We can’t, of course, but that doesn’t mean the practice isn’t valuable. Anytime we pause to assess where we are and where we’re going, I think it’s a good thing. Personally, I choose a word-of-the-year to focus and reflect on as the New Year begins. And so I’ve been thinking….
LOOKING BACK
“Intentional” was my word-of-the-year for 2018 and it sorta carried over into 2019 with a stab at intentional daily prayer disciplines. My purposeful prayer regimen wasn’t perfect, but it did lead me into consistent journaling for the first time ever. It’s been nice and more than helpful to look back over my prayers this year to see how my heart has changed, which problems showed up over and over again, and get a larger look at the trajectory God has me on. It’s also been good for a chuckle or two at my own expense. I’m downright weird sometimes.
As it turns out, my desire for intentionality and prayer over the last two years was sent by Providence Himself. God knew all about the massive shakeup coming for me in 2019, and I believe He prompted me to put my faith anchors down firm so I wouldn’t be carried away in the winds of uncertainty. We could argue that God will use whatever spiritual discipline you and I might choose to better shape and mold us. But I give Him more credit than that and suspect He was my prompter all along. And I’m super grateful. Prone to “go with the flow” as I am, I could have been carried off into to the cray-cray long ago. The recurring choice of intentionality and prayer surely saved me some anxious nights and kept me close to my Father’s side. He whispered words of hope to me a million times, and outright pulled me back from the ledge of despair on more than one occasion, I tell you.
I wonder what 2019 was like for you. I’m sure it had its ups and downs - every year seems like a roller coaster ride. You may have experienced the greatest joys and victories of your life so far. I hope so, and I’d do a happy dance with you if I could as we look back with gratitude to the One who made it happen. Perhaps your life took a left turn at Albequerque, or swirled in circles, leaving you with a dizzy start to the New Year. I’d love to toss in a lifeline, help you focus on the God who never changes to get your bearings. Or maybe 2019 swept through like a hurricane, flattening everything familiar and leaving a giant mess for you to clean up. If so, I’d sit with you in the rubble, weep, and grieve as we sift through what remains, looking for seeds of new beginnings.
Whatever the last twelve months held, the New Year cues us to reflect on what we’ve learned, how we’ve grown, what we now know about God. Breathe it in, my friend. Take the time to look back.
And then turn your eyes forward with me.
A NEW WORD
I like choosing a single word to focus on for the New Year rather than making resolutions. Not that I don’t have a laundry-list of personal improvements to make. I just know myself too well to think that will work for me. I tend towards over-achieving, taking on bigger goals than my human frailties can sustain. Big dreams are awesome when they’re given by a Big God. Little ol’ me just can’t pull them off all by my lonesome, though I can’t seem to stop myself from trying. When I inevitably come up short of my own expectations, I’m also prone to self-flagellation, covering my head in my blankets for shame and wishing I could sleep the whole thing away. I am a woman of extremes. Pray for my husband.
Setting all of that aside, I select a single word to frame my thinking and choices for the next several months. First of all, a single word is easy to remember for more than a week. Secondly, it’s less measurable than a pass/fail resolution. Don’t get me wrong — tangible goal setting has its place and I have the utmost respect for motivational gurus who rightly encourage us to set milestones we can measure and celebrate. I’ve just given up on being able to predict what direction God will take me for more than a few days (and sometimes not even that long), let alone an entire year. I prefer to set my measurable goals in smaller chunks. For the New Year, I choose to focus on a single character trait or discipline that will help me look more like Jesus. Then I can press for progress rather than perfection, and I’m far less prone to be so darn hard on myself.
There’s something appealing in the simplicity, to be honest. Our world makes everything so darn complicated already. Why not start the New Year with a simple word we speak over our lives and our hearts, let it be the lens that we filter the myriad of stuff through? We’ll need to be prayerful about it, of course. We need God to speak His Word over us and then repeat it to our own hearts over and over rather than us just coming up with whatever makes us happy. I could choose “pithy” as my word for example, but I’m pretty sure God has better ideas. And I’ve already pointed out how the concepts He’s whispered to me in past years have pretty much saved my life.
So, choosing a word for 2020 means starting with prayer. And, to follow the wisdom of Jo Saxton with her “Hello/Goodbye” concepts for a change of season, we need to look at where we’ve been to see where God might be leading us. Then, we choose a word that embodies the best we can understand of His plans for us, leaving Him to do the rest. He’s perfectly capable of reshaping us, or prompting us to start all over if the need arises, so we don’t have to put a lot of pressure on ourselves to get it “right,” whatever that means.
Over the last few days and weeks, I’ve been thinking and praying about what my word for the New Year might be. I’ve surveyed the etchings 2019 has left on my soul, considered the challenges I can already in front of me, dreamed a few dreams and held them up with open hands to my God. And I’ve caught a glimpse of what God has been building in me and what I’ll need a whole lot more of in the coming months.
My word for 2020….
Determination.
MOVING FORWARD
The phrase that keeps rattling around in my brain comes from one of my daughter’s video games, of all places. In “Undertale,” the main character Frisk faces a series of monsters as he navigates a vast unseen world under the earth. Faced with many challenges and all the uncertainty of the unfamiliar, he faces the path before him “filled with determination.” The phrase comes up so often, it’s comical. He’s not just steeling up his courage or tentatively moving forward despite his fears. “Filled with determination,” he briskly moves ahead to whatever the next challenge, the next monster, the next level of the game may hold.
“My natural stubbornness keeps me rooted in place, but determination moves me forward despite whatever obstacles lie ahead. And I’ve taken enough trips around the sun to know that growth comes from overcoming obstacles. ”
If you’ve known me for a while, then you know I claim the spiritual gift of stubbornness as one of my stronger traits. So, fostering determination may not sound like I’m stretching myself all that far. Yes, stubbornness is a gift, but it’s also a double-edged sword. Once I make up my mind — like I did when I was a preschooler and decided that all green foods (even jello) were toxic and would never pass my lips — it’s a super tough sell to get me to change my mind. (In the the case of green foods, I ate nary a vegetable for a good six or seven years. Flintstone vitamins to the rescue!) So yeah, I’m naturally stubborn whether I’m wrong or right. I can plant my feet and become as immovable as concrete, and that trait serves me well at times. There are also times when my stubbornness gets me into trouble, keeping me still when I should flex a bit. Determination and stubbornness may be related, but they’re not the same.
I’m leaning more in the direction of biblical perseverance with “determination”, though, and it has a bit of a different ring to my ear. I see God developing this trait in me as He moves me along my journey with Him, and I’m excited about what His Word says the outcome will be. If you will allow me the liberty of subbing in determination as a synonym for the perseverance the Bible describes, I think I might be onto something.
Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. (Romans 5:3-5 NIV)
Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. (James 1:2-4 NIV)
For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:5-8 NIV)
My natural stubbornness keeps me rooted in place, but determination moves me forward despite whatever obstacles lie ahead. And I’ve taken enough trips around the sun to know that growth comes from overcoming obstacles. Stubbornness serves me well to stand in the face of an onslaught coming against me. But it will take determination to climb a mountain. As I think of it, I can easily see how I need to be filled with determination as I face the New Year with all of the dreams and challenges lining the road ahead. I want to step into the unknown not tentatively, but boldly and having pre-decided to keep moving forward no matter what.
I’m super excited about what God promises will happen in and through me if I can manifest more of this quality in my life. He promises such wonders as character, hope, love, maturity that lacks nothing, godliness — all the good stuff. Whatever else happens, I can take that to the bank. You and I, no matter what last year brought us, have had our fair share of trials to test our faith. We could let these birth determination in us, let God prove that He brings beauty from ashes and fills up all our empty spaces.
But getting there will itself take determination. Not passive stubbornness, and certainly not a fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants go-with-the-flow mindset. We’ll need to face the obstacles head on, decide in advance we’re getting over the mountain, across the valley, and through the woods no matter what we find there. Like Frisk from “Undertale” who decided getting home was worth any cost, we must be filled with determination to get where we’re going this year.
Yup. That’s my word for 2020.
Determination.
What’s your word for the New Year?