2015 is feeling big to me. I am one who doesn’t spend a lot of time on goals for the new year until I am in the new year. My head can’t really focus on the twelve months ahead in the middle of Christmas. I don’t want it to either. Christmas is such a sacred and holy time and I spend most of my energy not getting pulled in to the full “cultural experience” of Christmas that I lose sight of the religious. That’s not to say that we don’t enjoy cultural traditions during this time of year, it is just that there is an imbalance to be had and I want the scale to tip heavily in the Jesus’ Birthday Camp and less in the Here Come’s Santa Clause Camp. Thus my focus can shift to the months ahead somewhere after December 26th. At this stage in the game—with three smallish kids at home—I don’t put pressure on myself to be locked and loaded with a complete list of goals for 2015 on January 1st.
I take the month of January. The first three full weeks are dedicated to detox my spiritual life. My church holds prayer from 6am-7am M-F and encourages us to fast something. Just like any detox there is a rough patch about 4 or 5 days in and then it gets a bit easier. The goal is to purge the things that have overgrown their proper place. Then after the fast, they might get put back, but they are placed within a healthy perspective. This time helps me to see more clearly the direction the year is supposed to take.
As I walk into 2015 I am still tying up loose ends from 2014. Last year the verse Romans 12:2 was my verse and I was amazed at what God did in my heart and mind over the last year. However, there are still a few things I know he is working out from my past. They are the biggies. I saw it coming and just wasn’t ready to do the hard part. That is part of how I know this is a God experience. When I would journal about what was going on inside, I would write I am just not ready. I felt peace and compassion and sensed that he knew. The need to dive in and deal with that issue faded for a while. It came back again over this past week. Not in a rushed panicked way that begged to be dealt with, but a gentle invitation…again. I am ready now to deal with some of the things in my past that are creating problems for me today. I feel His Presence and it is tender and compassionate as I know He is going to walk me through a proper healing.
Another confirmation.
At the beginning of this week, I began seeing the color turquoise everywhere. I even picked it out to wear two days in a row. I can’t really describe it, but I was drawn to the color. I also felt the invitation—or the stirring—to open the emotional wound of my past again and finish the healing that has been going on for the last few years. I decided to look up the biblical meaning of the color turquoise. One of the meanings that jumped out at me was “life-giving flow of the Holy Spirit” this meant something specific to me, but in regards to my past, another meaning was “healing.”
As my theme for the year is Be Brave, one of the ways I am going to be brave early in the year is to explore the rest of what the Father has for me about my past and let him heal the last bit of wounding that lingers.
I don’t want old wounds to stand between me and another hurting soul. I want to be one who can love others overtop their shouts of fear. I can only do that with love I receive from God. His love is perfect and perfect love casts out fear. You will not succeed if you are taking a pinch of His love and blending it with the actions of others and your jaded version of human love. That is a ball of yuck that no one will benefit from. Furthermore, they will look at the speck of God love in there and count it against Him. This year as I press into learning how to accept God’s love for me―my 2015 verse is 1 John 4:10—I want to be able to be saturated myself with His love so much that I am brave enough to love others regardless of how they act.