groundedness

For the past few years as I've approached my birthday, I've chosen a word for my coming year. On the one hand, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to choose a word for my coming year when I have very little idea what it will contain and how I will personally grow. But I've noticed that when I choose a word before the year begins, I often find that my year becomes a surprising fulfillment of it. Maybe it's just the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon where you start seeing something everywhere, but I like it. 

How do I choose the word? No really significant process. I don't scour my journals or pray about it or get the input of friends and family. I don't really even spend much time thinking about it beforehand. So far, it has just come to me like a quiet thought in the days and weeks leading up to my birthday. 

For twenty-four, the word was "Clarity." That year ended up being the most internally chaotic and cloudy year of my life as I found myself floundering in questions, doubts, and uncertainty about my faith. And yet, I kept thinking back to that word, clarity. It gave me a different perspective on the chaos I was feeling. It made me realize that while it felt like a fog of confusion, it was actually slowly unveiling many of the claims, truths, an assumptions I'd held without investigation. In the process of initial "deconstruction," the dust felt blinding. But when the dust began to settle, I could see the foundation with more clarity than I'd ever seen before. 

For twenty-five, the word was "Openness." Learning to consider and hold things I'd never allowed myself to before. Allowing questions and possibilities that I would have closed myself off to in the past. 

For twenty-six, the word was "Acceptance." Learning to acknowledge what is and not always have to change it. Whether it is myself, the world, people around me, my circumstances, or any number of things big and small, I am by nature a reformer and a changer. This year I learned more how to accept people as they are, how to accept life as it is, and how to accept myself as I am. 

So for twenty-seven, I have felt the word "Groundedness" growing in me. I am speaking it over myself as this new year of my life begins. I hope it gently guides me deeper into myself, into my people, into my goals, into my life in the here and now. I know I have a huge year ahead of me, likely filled with some of the greatest highs and lows of my life. I hope that each step of the way I continue learning to be grounded in what is good and true and present. 

Here we go, twenty-seven.