Last year I did not come up with a word of the year. Last year on January 1, I was barely surviving life with a newborn.
A newborn with silent reflux...which I didn't even know was a thing.
One thing I did know, I knew I didn't have the capacity, strength, patience and some days, even the motivation to care for that sweet baby. And I was completely blindsided by my unraveling because I had raised two happy and healthy newborn's within the past four years, so I should know what to do right?
Oh the pride that comes before a fall.
But all that to say, I never sat down and came up with a word for 2017. I'm honestly still processing a lot about this past year. General themes were uncertainty, food intolerances, cancer, control, and also, amidst those hard things, some really deep joy and deepening friendships
I always like to think back on a year and ask God what my actual word should have been, what He had in store for us. And I've already got that word. And really, no matter what word I would have picked 12 months ago, it wouldn't have changed that 2016 was the year of unveiling.
Unveiling of truth.
Unveiling of evil.
Unveiling of false contentment and misused favor.
My friends, we are living in a world that's trying to deceive us. We are tricked into seeing certain things as good that are truly evil. We hold fast to things that distract us and steal meaning and joy and fullness of this life. We find security and safety in things that are fickle and won't last.
We turn away from things that are too hard or too uncomfortable to maintain our own sanity and personal comfort.
As CS Lewis wrote "We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."
But Jesus didn't turn away from the uncomfortable or the undesirable. He didn't leave us in our sorrow so that he could secure his own comfort and safety. In fact, he did the exact opposite.
Unveiling in 2017 has shown me all the ways I'm not like Jesus. His Spirit dwells in me but I walk along on my own terms.
Unveiling is good. A friend of mine always says "ignorance is NOT bliss". But unveiling isn't necessarily comfortable, because you see things in a new way that reveal previous deception. You see you've spent your life making mud pies. You find that you've been walking along a path and suddenly you're required to stop and turn around.
Stop and turn around.
That takes contentment with looking different. That takes humility to accept that you were wrong. That takes confidence in the source of the unveiling.
More to come.
Including how my word for 2018 is a continuation of "unveiling".
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