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In which I look back at my word for 2020
Every January, I choose a word for the new year, a word to guide my thoughts, my actions, the things I lean into and the things I let go of. This year, I chose the word rooted. Meaning to establish or settle firmly. I began the new year with a vision of a tree, a great big ancient thing with gnarled roots. I wanted to be that tree. I wanted to be established firmly in every area of my life.
Knowing what I know now, I cannot help but smile a little as I look back because what was I this year if not rooted? I quite literally sheltered myself and my family in our home, where we have spent the majority of our lives since March 13, the day I’ll never forget. 2020 was a year of settling in, and it’s almost like a piece of me, deep in my bones sensed it coming. And so I vowed to be rooted.
I was rooted in my body, in the skin I inhabit and all its glorious imperfections. I took up yoga this year, and every time I ground my body down into the mat, I cry. Rooted.
I spent most of my time outside this year, barefoot, dipping toes in our swimming pool or feeling the hot stone of our front stoop on my arch as I watched my children play. I walked through grass, picking flowers and releasing butterflies we’d grown from caterpillars. What a gift to befriend the very earth from which I came. Rooted.
I nourished myself with food made from my own hands, loaves of warm bread, greens I’d picked off the stem, boiled together with peppers and oil. Rooted.I was rooted in my marriage, standing up for and standing with the man who loved me back to life amidst gossip and hurtful words and betrayals. We clung to one another, and clung to God, and dug in our heels for what we knew was right. Rooted.
I was rooted in my mothering, in how I spilled over for the two who needed so very much of me this year, a year they didn’t know how to make sense of. I anchored down to make myself their guide, their protector, their home. Rooted.
I was rooted in my faith and my studies and my work, in living in the holy tension of God’s kingdom now and also not yet. I was rooted in the rhythms of the everyday, of sacred bleeding into secular, of God in all things, particularly the ordinary. I shook off a faith that required me to stay small, stay silent, keep the status quo, keep the outsiders out and the insiders in. I threw open doors and set wide tables; I preached and prayed and prophesied; I did the work I knew I was called to and didn’t worry about whether or not it looked it different than somebody else’s. Rooted.
I’m still mulling over what I think my word for next year will be — more to come on that later. For now, I acknowledge that one of the things this brutal year has shown me is that it’s possible to quit looking ahead for what’s next, what’s new, and settle in to what simply is right here and now. Maybe, for a while, at least, there is nothing else just around the corner; maybe this moment, this season, these people, this is all we’ve got. I think we owe it to ourselves to be fully where our feet are, to look around at this life we’re building, and declare it fully, wholly, completely good, and root ourselves there.
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one word 2019: enough.
About a month ago, I started thinking about what I wanted my one word for the new year to be. I had my own ideas, of course, about how I’d like the year to go, and words like travel or beauty, family, even gather, swirled in my mind, even as I recognized those weren’t the words mine to grab hold of. See, my one word has a tendency to choose me. It comes unexpectedly–the first thought upon waking, a moment of clarity during a time of prayer–and then it simply does not let go. It’s not always attractive or appealing, and there’s usually a brief period of me wrestling with it, much as Jacob did when the angel touched his hip bone after a long night of struggle with God. And then–surrender. Giving up, giving in. Allowing the word and the Spirit to move me into unchartered, surprising places in the new year.
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Erin Loechner wrote on Instagram a few weeks ago that she has “often operated under perceived scarcity. Is there enough time in my day for this? Enough space for this? Do we have room for that? Is it essential, necessary? Are you sure?” Her words drained my breath momentarily, and I felt hot tears fluttering behind my eyes. See, I’ve lived my entire life with that exact same scarcity mentality. Always afraid of running out, always worried about lack. Always sure I’m going to come up empty-handed, somehow. Maybe it was my upbringing, the poverty, the realization that no good thing ever lasted long. Maybe it’s low-self esteem, the innate belief that I’m somehow not worthy of having those good things, so I snatch them up, try to hoard them if I happen to stumble upon some along the way. Maybe it’s just my personality: afraid of risk, preferring always the comfort and stability of a sure and familiar thing.
For all this and more, my one word for 2019 is enough. Because, as Erin continues, “abundance exists. There is enough time to go around, enough space for us all. There always has been.“
My fear has always been not having enough. Not being enough. And yet, if I look back, I can see what God has been speaking to me all along: “I am giving you manna.”
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Manna. The mystery substance that God fed his people with in Exodus 16. Daily nourishment that literally means “What is it?” The Israelites were sent fresh manna each morning, and each person was to gather enough for their need: no more, and no less. If they tried to hoard their leftovers it spoiled, except for on their Sabbath, when they would have need of their reserves. For forty years, the Israelites ate manna. For forty years, it was a gift straight from God, and it sustained them. And it wasn’t until they’d reached their promised destination that it was replaced with the milk and honey of abundance.
The manna is sufficient for the journey. Once gone, I hunger like the Israelites. But God fills us with enough; no more, and no less. We don’t get to hoard or stockpile; we are given only what we need, as we need it. And this is grace.
It’s a mindset that’s so counterintuitive to the culture of mass accumulation that we live in, and I suppose that might be what Jesus was touching on when he talked about his upside down kingdom. This life of faith seems strange, sometimes. And by no means do I do it perfectly. Clearly, I am still learning the sacrament of dependence, this art of trusting what I cannot see. I am full of fear sometimes. I complain. I doubt. And through it all, he is still good, and he is still enough.///
Some of my favorite books are C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the Pevensie children push past a rows of fur coats before emerging from the wardrobe into a cold, snowy forest. Susan, the responsible older sister (and probably the character I relate most to), suggests they each take a coat to keep warm. She is practical, responsible. She simply wants to be prepared. But, as Heidi Haverkamp points out, preparation “can become an end and…at some point, we have to let go of preparing and just step forward in faith.”
However, the most compelling thing about Susan, I think, is she “shows us that what we need may already be in front of us, if we are aware to notice. The fur coats were there when they needed them. The children meet others along the way who guide them and feed them. That doesn’t mean the journey is easy or that they’re never cold, wet, or hungry; but, because they have one another and allow themselves to accept help from others, they have enough” (emphasis mine).///
I think that my word for the new year is here to teach me to be where my feet are and seek sufficiency there. It’s to remind me to taste and see that he is good, and his faithfulness is promised, and we will have enough for our adoption. It’s to encourage me to be who I am, as I am, and remember that I am fully and completely loved without ever changing a thing. The new year can be a time to set lofty goals, and I have often fallen into the cycle of grandiose dreams and resolutions that are abandoned by, at best, the third week of January. And then December rolls around and I still haven’t lost the forty pounds, I’m still too sarcastic sometimes, I still hold grudges for longer than I should; and, before I know it, I collapse into a puddle of my own failings and disappointment. But right here, right now, exactly as I am, I am loved. I am enough, even if I never accomplished another blessed thing for the rest of my life.
That truth is one I will wear like a weighted blanket in 2019. Enough-ness will be my home.
