Happy New Year, friend! I hope you celebrated well the past few days and were able to reflect upon this previous year. I am so eager for 2020 and I pray you are too!
Every year since my first year in college (besides maybe one), I’ve chosen a word or phrase for the upcoming year. These words/phrases have given me vision, they’ve set the tone for what is to come, they have helped mold me into the woman I am called to be and they teach me more about the character of God.
My word last year was HOPE. I choose the word hope because it was something I struggled with, something I knew I needed to cling to and could learn more about. I learned in Scripture that hope is often paired with strife or struggle, which only makes sense. We don’t hope for things that we already have, we don’t hope for things we already see and can hold. We hope in the unseen, we hope in the longing for something.
This last year I hoped for a healthy pregnancy, I hoped for more reconciliation in my marriage, I hoped that my business would be fruitful. And through it all I saw God’s hand, for He is our Living Hope. My pregnancy literally had no complications or struggle tied to it, I fully experienced the Lord’s joy and provision. There’s always things to work on in marriage and there’s a lot of strife and battling between spouses and in one’s own heart and Alexander and I saw and experienced a different sense of God’s beauty in our friendship and marriage this last year. My business looked different than I thought it would and planned for, but it’s still thriving and growing and I absolutely love what I do, I feel like I was created to do this work.
Hope was the perfect word for me to choose. And it’s led me so well into this next year and decade.
My word for this year is F R E E D O M – within struggle, within heartache and strife, after hoping, comes freedom. I’m eager and ready to learn more about the freedom I already have and what it looks like to live more freely.
Do you choose a word or phrase for the year?