My One Word: 2014
"Do you trust me?"
We've all said it. We've all heard someone else say it. Last week I heard "The Bachelor" say it to a girl who was FREAKING OUT as they stood on the edge of a bridge getting ready to bungee-jump off. How can her trust in him really insure her safety when she jumped? He wasn't the one that was going to catch her. He didn't connect the cords or fasten her harness. I'm willing to bet that date wasn't even his idea, but somehow her jumping off a bridge while she was strapped to him was going to illustrate trust in their relationship. I digress.
My one word for this year is
TRUST. Part of me keeps thinking I want to pick another word, which probably means that the Lord is going to really make me choose to either trust him, or not, this year - and I probably won't like it.
In the past I've had a tendency to try project something on my year with the words I've chosen. I've heard my friends say at the end of a year, "Man, I had no idea when I chose this word that God was going to REALLY do [such and such] in my life." This got me thinking. One year, my word was "love". I said I chose it because I wanted to love others more, and love the Lord more, and love myself for who I was, and blah blah blah. What I secretly hoped was that by choosing the word love, God would make me fall in love WITH A BOY. I thought, "To be sure, if I choose the word love, God will bring love into my life. He has to!" Baaahahaha... Nope.
Last year, I decided to skip the projections and just be real. I took a long hard look at myself and realized that what I really needed to focus on was SURRENDER. So many times my prayers sounded something like, "Lord, this is what I want to happen, so if you could just go along with my plan that would be great thanks." That needed to stop. During the course of 2013, I found myself in constant prayer. Not because the word surrender had made me more spiritual, or automatically closer to God - I just had to remind myself to surrender THAT often! It seemed like almost every thought that I had, I immediately had to say, "Lord, that's yours - I'm giving it to you," every thought, every desire, every situation, everyTHING. I'll tell you what, it made me realize how completely incapable I am of life without Him.
As 2013 came to an end, and it was time to start praying about a new word for the new year, "trust" seemed like the obvious choice. Oh, but I fought it. I wanted to go back to the projection route. I wanted to pick "move" because I had a friend whose word was that last year, and she ended up actually moving to a new city. I thought, "I want to move, I should pick move as my word." I thought about trying "love" again. Really, MC? Really? Geez. The more I thought about words that would be more fun, the more I knew "trust" had to be my word. In all of the surrendering that I did last year, I found that I still had a really hard time trusting. You know how hindsight is always 20/20. I think I had to surrender the same things over and over again because I didn't really trust the Lord enough to fully surrender. I wanted the Lord to be in control, but I wanted it to be on my terms. I wanted to be a backseat driver. You know those license plates that say "If Jesus is your co-pilot, CHANGE SEATS"? I was just fine with the seating arrangement as it was thank you very much. I wanted to be able to fully surrender and trust God, but being the control-freak that I am, I just couldn't do it. I'm going to learn though.
It's funny because now every time I read any verse in the Bible, I hear the Lord saying, "Trust me. Just do it. Look, I'm giving you another reason why you should!" You know what else is funny? Some of my very favorite verses, ones that I've loved for a long time, are all of a sudden SCREAMING at me with "TRUST ME!!" It's like God is smacking me on the forehead and saying, "DUH! I've been saying this all along! (Shoulda had a V8!)" Ok, ok Lord. I get it. My trust is a work in progress.
But at least it's in progress.
We've all said it. We've all heard someone else say it. Last week I heard "The Bachelor" say it to a girl who was FREAKING OUT as they stood on the edge of a bridge getting ready to bungee-jump off. How can her trust in him really insure her safety when she jumped? He wasn't the one that was going to catch her. He didn't connect the cords or fasten her harness. I'm willing to bet that date wasn't even his idea, but somehow her jumping off a bridge while she was strapped to him was going to illustrate trust in their relationship. I digress.
My one word for this year is
TRUST. Part of me keeps thinking I want to pick another word, which probably means that the Lord is going to really make me choose to either trust him, or not, this year - and I probably won't like it.
In the past I've had a tendency to try project something on my year with the words I've chosen. I've heard my friends say at the end of a year, "Man, I had no idea when I chose this word that God was going to REALLY do [such and such] in my life." This got me thinking. One year, my word was "love". I said I chose it because I wanted to love others more, and love the Lord more, and love myself for who I was, and blah blah blah. What I secretly hoped was that by choosing the word love, God would make me fall in love WITH A BOY. I thought, "To be sure, if I choose the word love, God will bring love into my life. He has to!" Baaahahaha... Nope.
Last year, I decided to skip the projections and just be real. I took a long hard look at myself and realized that what I really needed to focus on was SURRENDER. So many times my prayers sounded something like, "Lord, this is what I want to happen, so if you could just go along with my plan that would be great thanks." That needed to stop. During the course of 2013, I found myself in constant prayer. Not because the word surrender had made me more spiritual, or automatically closer to God - I just had to remind myself to surrender THAT often! It seemed like almost every thought that I had, I immediately had to say, "Lord, that's yours - I'm giving it to you," every thought, every desire, every situation, everyTHING. I'll tell you what, it made me realize how completely incapable I am of life without Him.
As 2013 came to an end, and it was time to start praying about a new word for the new year, "trust" seemed like the obvious choice. Oh, but I fought it. I wanted to go back to the projection route. I wanted to pick "move" because I had a friend whose word was that last year, and she ended up actually moving to a new city. I thought, "I want to move, I should pick move as my word." I thought about trying "love" again. Really, MC? Really? Geez. The more I thought about words that would be more fun, the more I knew "trust" had to be my word. In all of the surrendering that I did last year, I found that I still had a really hard time trusting. You know how hindsight is always 20/20. I think I had to surrender the same things over and over again because I didn't really trust the Lord enough to fully surrender. I wanted the Lord to be in control, but I wanted it to be on my terms. I wanted to be a backseat driver. You know those license plates that say "If Jesus is your co-pilot, CHANGE SEATS"? I was just fine with the seating arrangement as it was thank you very much. I wanted to be able to fully surrender and trust God, but being the control-freak that I am, I just couldn't do it. I'm going to learn though.
It's funny because now every time I read any verse in the Bible, I hear the Lord saying, "Trust me. Just do it. Look, I'm giving you another reason why you should!" You know what else is funny? Some of my very favorite verses, ones that I've loved for a long time, are all of a sudden SCREAMING at me with "TRUST ME!!" It's like God is smacking me on the forehead and saying, "DUH! I've been saying this all along! (Shoulda had a V8!)" Ok, ok Lord. I get it. My trust is a work in progress.
But at least it's in progress.
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