Unraveling

Hello 2017. I feel like I should write something about you—a new year, a fresh start, and a way to have closure with the chaos of 2016. But like my friend’s future book title, Chaos and Grace, reminds me, grace exists, even abounds, in chaos.

In this blog, I’m not going to focus on 2016. That task is much too arduous. Processing the chaos of 2016 is something I’ve been doing in small doses and will continue to do throughout this year. 

But for now, I want to celebrate the hope that awaits in 2017. Not because, as Anne Shirley would say, a new year is “always fresh, with no mistakes in it.” But because I am a saved, sought-after daughter of God who always has hope in the life of Jesus. 

And it’s in this full reliance on Christ that I step in 2017. 

If 2016 did anything, it unraveled me. And like I said, I’m not here to focus on 2016, but this unraveling has positioned me to enter the new year with true repentance and humility. I am fully and reverently aware of my smallness. Not smallness in significance but smallness in strength and control. I have come face-to-face with my weakness, foolishness, sin, shame, pride, impatience, defensive living, mistrusting and deceitful heart. These things have and continue to unravel me. But I’m starting to see that this, too, is the kindness of the Lord. 

I have spent the better part of my life making myself strong, good, held together, lovely, and changed. The unraveling of 2016 has taught me that my meager attempts to hold the pieces of my life together are fruitless and flimsy. I’ve had to learn that the Lord is the One who holds together, who gives worth, who give freedom, who makes me the whole and free person I desire to be but can’t. The unraveling has been a severe mercy.

So I’m entering 2017 unraveled but hopeful, shaken but secure, weak but steadfast. 

I’ve never been one for goal-setting. I never saw the purpose in writing down resolutions I knew I wouldn’t keep, and I never committed to prayer and stillness long enough to hear a “word of the year” from the Lord. But this year is different in so many ways. I’ve spent more time than I wanted in stillness and prayer, and there is no doubt that the Lord wants to speak “truth” over my 2017. 

Truth. 

That’s my word and prayer for 2017—to tear down the walls and rip up the floor boards of deceit and lies and rebuild a structured dwelling of truth. Aka: ruthlessly kill lies with light and let Truth resurrect the dead parts of my soul. I want to relearn who God is, who I am, and what He says about the world. The scales have already begun to fall from my eyes, and I pray they only continue to fall. 

For all I know, I’m tangled in a massive web of my own doing, a web that’s kept me close to death for longer than I realize. But God is unraveling that. He is able; He is kind; He truly loves me and chooses me. I can’t emphasize how intensely He is searing those truths into my heat. They are no longer just words. They are my shameful, leprous, crippled, adulterous heart being chosen, brought home, rescued, and spoken tenderly to. Like Gladys Alward’s ministry to Chinese orphan girls enslaved to the cultural oppression of feet-binding, Truth takes my broken, bandaged feet and slowly unravels, excruciatingly massages, painfully stretches, and releases me into the slow healing process of freedom. 

So in light of that word, Truth, and in light of some recent hobbies the Lord has been nice enough to drop into my lap, here’s some goals/resolutions/ideas for 2017:

1. Place the word “Truth” onto several surfaces you’ll see every day.
2. Choose one “truth” (word, phrase, verse from the Bible) to be the truth I’m believing that day. 
3. With my fancy new Tombow pens and sketchpad, hand-letter that truth at the end of my quiet time, or during some moment of the day, to meditate on that truth. 
4. Get a new Bible that’s smaller and not a brick (love my study Bible, but not always)
5. Start a reading plan that goes through the Bible chronologically 
6. Write for a half hour a day (fun writing, journaling, blogging, querries, articles)
7. Continue sending 800 words a week to Ashton
8. Make a list of jobs, cities, people and pray over the next step of life. Hang this somewhere I’ll see it and remember to pray.
9. Write down my resolutions and hang them in my living room.

As I write these resolutions, I’m committing them to the Lord. He will do whatever He wants to this year, and I can trust in His goodness. He is with me every step of the way. He is with me in my weakness. He is doing a healing work in the unraveling. I am His workmanship, a masterpiece for His glory. He has not left me. He is not angry with me. He has been teaching me of His love since Adam and Eve. He is satisfied. He satisfies.

Here's to a Truth-filled 2017!