word of the year

Zoom In

My favorite piece of camera equipment is my Canon 18-200mm lens, because I love to zoom in. The closer the better. I want to cut out extraneous things and just focus on my subject.

I’m finding this to be true in my on-going quest to abide as well. The more I focus on God, the more He fills my lens, other things are just pushed out. They become less important to me. I care less about my goals unless they are what God is calling me to do. I care less about being seen or known because I am focused on the one who sees and knows me most. I find myself comparing to others less because I simply don’t see them in my view anymore. It’s all Him.

Our pastor touched on this during the sermon this morning when he said, “When Jesus is bigger, when He is our focus, He is enough.” Amen.

It’s true. This week, through a variety of ways, I’ve spent more time thinking about God (preparing a talk for the middle schoolers, listening to podcasts during my drive times, reading 2 Corinthians which is hands down my favorite book of the Bible) and I feel like God’s been bigger to me. I’ve zoomed in. Oh to always have this view.

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God in me

I remember my then three year old son wrestling with theology when he asked, “Mom, if Jesus lives in my heart and I eat food, will it go near Jesus?”

I’ve had my own theological wrestlings this week about God in me as I try to wrap my mind around the words, “Abide in me and I in you.” It’s one thing for me to try to make God my dwelling place, but then He turns around and says He’s going to choose to dwell in me too.

So that’s my abide pondering for this week – the fact that God abides in me. The God of the universe lives in me. What? When I think about that, so much in me says, “Are you sure You want to do that?

“I mean, I know me. I know that mixed up in all the redemption You’ve done there’s still a fair amount of depravity. I’m a sinner, God. Why would you want to do that?”

But that’s the great and awesome mystery. He’s not a God who redeems from afar. He gets right up in there and transforms from the inside out. He dwells in me while still renovating me into a place more fit for a king.

I’ve been asking Him to help me grasp this more deeply. I like the way Henri Nouwen puts it in his book Return of the Prodigal Son, “I am called to enter into the inner sanctuary of my own being where God has chosen to dwell . . . it is the place where I am held safe in the embrace of an all-loving Father who calls me by name and says, ‘You are my beloved child, on whom my favor rests.'”

It makes abiding even more appealing to know He’s already met me more than halfway. It’s a place where I can rest, trust, be loved. He abides in me. Wow.

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Weekly Word – I Need Your Eyes

One of those words of wisdom I adopted as a young mom was the practice of making sure my kids were looking me in the eyes when I needed them to hear something important. I have so many memories of me saying, “I need your eyes . . . I need your eyes” while my children’s faces were inclined toward me, but their eyes were still straining to look elsewhere.

God has been telling me, “I need your eyes.” Not me sort of looking at Him while I’m holding out for something better out there somewhere, my half-attention while I peek at what’s around the corner. He wants all of my attention. He wants to be my only audience. Seek first His kingdom. In all your ways submit to Him. Fix your eyes on Jesus.

God made me a writer, and I love that. But it means I am in a constant battle to keep looking to Him rather than to the audience of the world. Facebook likes and twitter retweets and blog comments feed a desire to be known and admired. The problem is, they will never satisfy. He will.

So this is what abiding looks like this week: Giving Him my eyes. Letting the voices of the world slowly be drowned out by His voice calling me.

This is my first in hopefully a weekly reflection on my word of the year, Abide. Something like my 31 Days of Victory except hopefully much easier. At least the writing about it.

What about you? How are you living out your one word?

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Choosing to Abide

So I’ve been trying to figure out how exactly I’m going to do Abide this year. What does it look like to dwell in God? How do I do that practically speaking? I keep imagining myself trying to abide, which feels about the same as when you try to think about something and then you can’t think of anything at all. You know that feeling?

What I do know is that what I want is to learn to settle in to a more solid place in my soul. I feel like I’ve lived there before, and much of it came from an intentional intake of truth, truth that told me who I am and who He is and where I stand with Him. Henri Nouwen talks about it in his book Inner Voice of Love,

“You have to trust the place that is solid, the place where you can say yes to God’s love even when you do not feel it. Right now you feel nothing except emptiness and the lack of strength to choose. But keep saying, ‘God loves me, and God’s love is enough.’ You have to choose the place over and over again, and return to it after every failure.”

I feel like the last year I’ve been focused outwardly, and not in a good way. Not in an other-centered way, but in a survival mode-is there life out there-kind of way. This quote reminds me that the solid place is inside, where He dwells, and I have to choose to go to that place again and again, not only after every failure but even after every success.

So here’s to choosing to abide in the solid place. What are you going to do to start focusing on your word of the year?

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One Word 2014

Abide. It means to remain, to continue, to stay; to dwell, to reside. It’s a good word for me as I continue to try to sink roots into this new life in America. But it’s not America I need to abide in; it’s God.

This became clear to me about 9 months into the year. I am by nature a person who wants to feel valuable. I guess we all do, at our core. But the problem for me is that I can slip into thinking that my value comes from what I offer to the world. Being in a new place, people often don’t know what it is you can offer. That’s where I was for most of this year, feeling a bit invisible, like a kid on a playground waiting to be chosen for the team.

I know in my head that my value lies solely in my position as God’s child. My worth is established. But it’s easy for me to feed off the admiration and recognition of others, and to believe that it ups my status in the world. I had to keep reminding myself that a lack of acknowledgement from others changed nothing. I had to keep going back to what He says about me; I am valuable to Him and that is enough.

Then later in the year, things started to change. I had opportunities to do what I enjoy most – speaking, writing, connecting deeply with other women. So many days I would say to God, “Who am I, that I get to do this?” It fed my desire to feel valuable. But at the end of the day, I know it isn’t where I should put my hope, my sense of well-being. It is fleeting.

Hence, abide. Whether I am seen or unseen, known or unknown, I need to keep going back to Him to tell me who I am so that I stay grounded. I want to live from a solid place, not a changing one. To do that I have to abide in Him, my refuge.

What about you? Leave a comment and tell me what your word of the year is for 2014!

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Word of the Year Review

Well, it’s been almost a year that I’ve been focusing on this one word, Content. This should be the time when I tell you all how incredibly content I’ve become and then we all rejoice together.

Um, how about instead I just tell you what I’ve learned?

Naturally when you try to do something, you first get to discover how much you are not that something. I began the year by learning to recognize what makes me discontent. Mainly it stems from comparison – comparing my life to someone else’s, to where I thought I’d be or what I thought I’d have at this point, comparing it to some ideal I’ve constructed in my head that may or may not be realistic (95% of the time it is not). In the process, I realized that being discontent gets me nowhere.

I also learned that being content has a lot to do with being clear on what I am called to do, be, and have. God has created me for specific purposes. He has made me who I am, which includes my strengths and weaknesses and gifts and current situation. They are not the same as the next person’s; that would be boring and pointless. When I have clarity on who I am and what He wants for me, I can rest in living within those boundaries.

Being content has a lot to do with remembering that I am a child, with keeping the posture of a child who believes that her Father knows best. It may not always be what I think I want, but I will trust and obey because it is for my good.

I think I have been learning too that contentment is different than resignation. Resignation is giving up, losing hope, killing desire. Contentment keeps desire alive but believes that if it isn’t being satisfied right now, there’s a reason.

So am I content? I would say I am more content, and that I have learned that I have a greater capacity to choose contentment than I realized, especially when I am aware of the state of my heart. I’m thankful for all God put in my life this year to teach me these things.

What about you? Did you see growth in your one word? (this is not a rhetorical question – I really do want to know!)

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Live for That Day

In my continuing 2013 quest for contentment, one thought seems to be becoming central, and it is this, “This is all temporal.”

I think it when I see commercials where women talk about wanting to always be bikini ready, or try to sell me age defying make up, or the perfect lawn which everyone needs, or, and I still can’t even believe I saw this, Tuscan style flavored dog food.

It would be so easy to see these things and think, “Yes, I need these too!” (except the Tuscan style dog food. I’m sorry, there’s just no way) and then begin to shape my life around obtaining these things. I know the inevitable stress that follows, not only from the futility of obtaining what they’re telling me I need, but also from the way that those pursuits crowd out other, probably more important, things.

But when I look at them and think, “This world, this life, is a blip on a line. It’s temporal. It’s fleeting. And in the end it SO won’t matter if I had a beach ready body or looked 30 when I was 50, or if my lawn looked good. My dog certainly doesn’t give a rip what she eats.”

And when I start to dwell on that, I find contentment creeping in. I find I can look at something and think, “Yeah, that would be nice. But it’s really ok if I don’t get there, because in the grand scheme of things, it falls in the ‘less than important’ category.”

So I’m trying to keep that thought in my mind. As our pastor said on Sunday, in his sermon about idols, “Don’t live for this day, live for that day.”

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How do we live content?

In 2013, I chose the word, “Content” as my word of the year.

A friend advised me in choosing a word to choose what I thought I needed. In that case, “chocolate” felt like a good word. It felt like it would carry me through a lot.

But I was in the throes of transition, and my needs were great. Greater than chocolate. God’s invitation was, “What if, by the end of the year, those needs aren’t met? Will you still be content?” So content it was.

Nearly two months into the year, I wondered if “chocolate” was a better word. I would have done it well. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t, though, because then my word for the year in 2014 would have been “detox” which doesn’t look very pretty embroidered on a pillow.

No, my word was “content.” By definition, it means, “in a state of peaceful happiness; satisfied with a certain level of achievement, good fortune, etc. and not wishing for more; to accept as adequate despite wanting more or better.”

Many words jump to mind as synonyms for “content” after reading this definition: satisfied, accepting, peaceful, patience, submission, enough.

It’s a lack of striving, of trying to make life a certain way. Receiving with gratitude and a quiet heart. Freedom from being in control. Taking a deep breath and saying, “This is ok.”

In other words, the antithesis of my mode of operation. Maybe yours too.

Most of the first two months of 2013 revealed where I was NOT content and why (“the first step is admitting you have a problem”). I saw discontentment in who I was, what I had, and what I did.

And so began a choice: where will I focus my attention?

I chose not to watch the red carpet for the Oscars because it bred discontentment with my body and my lack of fame.

My Pinterest time dwindled because after I looked there, I felt unsettled and uneasy about the lack of awesome DIY projects that could make my house look like a magazine ad.

Facebook and Instagram I took in smaller doses.

I learned to ask questions like, “When you look at your own body, will you choose to be content? Will you say yes to what God has given you?”

or, “When you look at the mess of things undone, can you smile and say, ‘It’s ok’?”

and maybe hardest of all, “Will you be content to let God choose His own way of working your life and not demand your own ways?”

So am I more content now? I don’t know about that. I would say I’m more and more convinced that it is the key for me to live well here right now.

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Word of the Year

Recently I was invited to a “word of the year” party. When I explained to Erik that this means we need to choose a word to focus on for the year, he decided his word is “beef.”

Ok then. So I am excited to go purely for the fact that a) there will be other women there and b) we will be talking about something meaningful. These two things alone will get me almost anywhere. But before I go, I need to decide on my word.

My friend suggested thinking of something I feel like I need in 2013, or a word that maybe God keeps bringing to mind, something that won’t get out of my head. Well, the word most often in my head is “overwhelmed” which is certainly not something I need. Maybe I need the opposite. What is that? Underwhelmed? Just whelmed?

I’m tempted to think that what I need is lots of warm fuzzy words like safe, comfortable. Chocolate. Who doesn’t need chocolate? I feel like what I need is to not look around my house and see a million things to do. I feel like I need to be known, on top of things, competent, in a routine, loved, needed. And also, chocolate.

I’ve tried a lot of words on for size, but like most of my clothes shopping, something’s always just a little off. I blame my hips. Well, for the clothing at least. But for the words, I realized that I go back and forth between wanting some word that will make me not feel messy or undone, and my strategy for that is either to go great guns and “get ‘er done-ish” about life, or, if I feel it’s insurmountable, I retreat to something like “rooted” or “fetal position.” Or chocolate.

But can I be in between? Can I be in the midst of the mess and the undoneness with a whole heart? And what would that look like?

Content. It would look like being content. So that is my word. I want to be able to look fully in the face of my circumstances and say “yes” to what God has for me this year, whether my house be decorated to my satisfaction or no, whether I am known or not, whether I get into my groove or live one disheveled day after another. I want to receive what He gives me each day, each moment, with a contented heart.

Right after this word came to mind, I opened a Dove chocolate wrapper (that could be the framework for a lot of my sentences, “After I ____________, I ate chocolate”) and the message inside said, “Take this moment. Enjoy it.” and I thought, “That sounds a lot like contentedness to me.”
Interestingly, this is not the first time God has spoken to me through a Dove chocolate wrapper. I guess He just plays the odds, “At some point today this girl is going to eat chocolate. That’s when I’ll get her.”

I’m excited to see how God will use this word in my life this year. I hope at some point He chooses to use chocolate again to speak to me. I listen well when He does.

So if you had a word for the year, what would it be?

 

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