Abide

I love a new year.  I love the freshness of a new planner, the possibility of a new date on a calendar, the hope of real change a new year can bring.  I’ve made resolutions on and off in the past pretty much always with the same results.  I create a long, elaborate plan to accomplish each resolution, usually one that requires me to focus on a new goal each month or so.  I put visual reminders all over my planner so that each month I am smacked in the face with whatever resolution is supposed to change my life/faith/walk with God that month.  I journal and pray and decide that this is the year that I will finally become the person I was meant to be.  And every year by about May I’ve completely forgotten whatever goal is on the docket that month and by September I’ve trained my eyes to straight up not see the many visual reminders I set in place in January.  And come the following January… the cycle repeats itself.

If I don’t participate in that debacle then I completely ignore it all together and that year flies by with the same lack of intention the others have May-December.

I don’t want to live chained to a resolution.  I don’t want to bum myself out with my lack of discipline.  And I don’t want to live unmoored and unchained to the work God is doing in my life, in this season.  I want to pay attention.  I want to wonder at his work.  I want to find myself breathless at this good and perfect God who loves me so well.

This year I’m trying to keep it simple stupid.  I’m going with one word.  As I thought about my one word for 2013 the word abide kept coming to the surface.  And it feels as though this may be my word for the year.

Abide conjures up images of being tucked up against God, covered by his wing as a mama chicken gathers her chicks.  Abide has me at his feet like Mary, dreamy eyed with wonder at his teaching.  Abide has me pulling against my automatic response to be self-sufficient, self-promotive, and self-congratulatory.  It has me sometimes keeping my mouth shut and hands still when inside I am screaming to argue my point, fix their problem, change! the! world!  Abide feels like work and rest all at once.  Abide is what I need.

I need to abide in him in the crazy, stress filled moments of potty training and hungry pre-meal crying.  I need to abide when I open my mouth to unleash a snarky/mean/gossipy tidbit.  Or a defensive self-explanation.  Or a frustrated attack.  Or 75% -95% of the times I open my mouth, really.  I need to abide in him with carved out time for his word and spaces for prayer.   When the brokenness of the world threatens to overtake me and rob me of my hope, I need to abide in him. 

I need to abide this year because I sense that I am missing out on something.  I am missing out on the joy and wonder of what God is doing in my life because I am not aware of his presence.  I am missing the chance to partner with God to do something real and good in the world because I’ve run 10 step ahead of him with my own plan of action (and lost interest in the problem once he’s ready to use me).   Mostly though, I’m missing God.  And this word, this abide feels like the manna my soul needs.

And so I will abide.  I will seek out this word, pay attention when I hear it, place it around my home.  I will pray it and use it and teach it.  I will trust that it is from God and it is for me.  And I will live it. 

Abide.