I’m old enough to remember when people didn’t come up with “a word for their year.” I remember a few writers deciding to name their year with a word, a decade and a half ago, and the rest of us in the Christian world followed suit. (Am I correct on that timing? Perhaps this has existed since the early church, but somehow it was not a part of my experience.😉)
I like the idea. It feels like an important distinction — marking one year as different from the next (even when they most often blend into one another). It builds anticipation, creates a listening heart, and allows us to look back and examine.
But it doesn’t have a spiritual magic. In the same way that I don’t think God is impressed by my Bible highlighters that don’t bleed through the pages, or the way I categorize my journal, or how I structure my Bible study, I’m not sure He’s waiting with bated breath to give me my word for the year.
But He enjoys me and I enjoy naming my year, so I suppose that’s enough.
Every year, just as the calendar turns, I spend twenty-four to thirty-six hours alone … exhaling the year before and preparing to inhale what’s ahead. I always stay in the same place: a half-mile walk to a city park with a rose garden and stretches of green pasture under large shade trees. In December, the rose bushes are bare and the fountains — in this City of Fountains where I live — are frozen over or covered, but something about their placement makes my winter walks there once a year magical.
This year, as I walked the circle around the park and watched my breath against the 30-degree winter grey, I prayed about my word — this naming game that God graciously entertains.
Psalm 23 danced through my mind. I’ve read it so many times that I’ve accidentally memorized it. Like a metronome, my feet moved and my mind recited each verse … slowly, steadily.
Perhaps this whole chapter will be my one word?
Then I stubbed my toe on restore.
Psalm 23:3 He restores my soul.
I want this after some years of tired living, tired navigating a hard that doesn’t seem like it will lift. And isn’t the word we have for the year so often what we want?
So I dismiss it, hoping for pixie dust or some such to help me name my year.
And I continue to recite Psalm 23 and that particular verse, now out loud. My lips move slower, struggling against the cold as my body shudders. And in so doing, restore becomes …
Re-story.
I say it outloud: “re-story.”
Ah! This is it, I think. The story from 2023 bled right into 2024; parts of the hard of my life aren’t lifting. New year, same story.
But what if it’s a new year, the same story … and a different narrator?
Same main characters, same set, but a slant on the plotline because the narrator has changed.
Re-story: new year, same story, new Storyteller.
Somehow I know God’s take on where I am and what I’m walking through is different than mine. He has a different angle.
Even if this isn’t your word (and, by golly, tell me if it is!) … I’ll let you borrow it as a perspective. You — living the same story in a new year: perhaps you, too, need a new narrator.
Perhaps you need to be re-storied or have your story, told back to you, by Another.
Until next time,
Sara
P.S. And for those of you for whom this resonates, I wrote an email series (it’s free) for you and me for this turn of the year. How do we find Him when the landscape hasn’t changed?
Restore, restored ... I like it, Sara.
I have more a theme for the year - 'new beginnings' ... Isaiah 43: 18-19 struck me plus a few other things as I mulled with the Lord themes, words for the new year.
"Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I'll make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert."
And so I've changed up some of my routines, to allow for 'new things' .. I've ditched Insta and Twitter, still on FB so I can stay in touch with friends like yourself, Sara, and have made some good progress writing in the 3 weeks we've had. I'm excited for what is ahead ... even though not sure what it may entail.
Go well, Sara, Nate and the H7 x
I've never done a word-for-the-year, but I absolutely may borrow this perspective - such a gently hard nudge for me to consider whose voice has been the loudest in the narration of my life lately. I would much rather hear His thoughts than mine again <3