Faith

As the New Year comes screaming in, I'm trying very hard to catch my breath.  Hello, 2013.  2012 ended much more quickly than I expected it to.  Suddenly, I have a 10 year old, my kids are half way through their 4th and 1st grade school years, and I'm faced with a new year that I feel like I need to set goals for.  I wonder why I feel like the new year means new goals?  Especially, since I know many will be not just forgotten, but purposely given up on.  Yup, sometimes I will stare a goal in the face and just say, "You know what? I'm done.  It was nice hangin' with ya for as long as I did, but it's time for goodbye."  And the next day?  I don't even really feel like a loser.  No, I feel more like I've let go of some dead weight I've been carrying around, and I'm free. 

So why even set goals?  Not sure I have an answer, except that I think it's healthy to re-evaluate your life here and there.  How am I living?  What am I slacking in and I need to pick it up?  Where am I working in vain and I need to lay it down?  If I'm honest, I re-evaluate my life often.  Maybe too much?  I don't know, but there is something about the first of the year that makes re-evaluation feel very formal. 

For the last few years, I have been picking one word that I want to drive my whole year.  (You can see past years here and here).  I love this idea, and I wish I came up with it, but actually the people at One Word did.  The thing is, I don't know what tomorrow will bring, some days I'm doing good to get to the end of the day, so having these specific goals to follow me all year seems too unrealistic to me, and not flexible enough.  However, one word can apply to your life in so many different ways.  It's moveable and all encompassing. 

This year, my word will be "faith".  This word has been in my ear since sometime this summer.   It was about that time that I started noticing that my word for last year, "reckless", needed to have a back bone.  Faith is that backbone.  Listen, I'm not saying that "reckless" was a bust last year.  I was all sorts of reckless last year.  In fact, I feel totally successfully reckless.  But what "reckless" did was open my eyes more clearly to "faith".  I need faith to be reckless. 

Have you ever noticed when you've done a workout, on say your legs, that the next day, it isn't just your legs that are sore?  Sometimes your back and lower core muscles are feeling a bit weary as well.  That's because  you use those back and lower core muscles to do a leg workout.  So last year, while my "reckless" muscles were getting a great workout, I was noticing that some other muscles were feeling sore.  They were my "faith" muscles.  I also noticed that they aren't as strong as I thought they should/what I would like them to be.  In fact, the more reckless I got, the sorer my faith muscles grew, and the more I realized I had a little "muscle imbalance". 

It's time to address this imbalance.  And can I say, I'm really feeling it?  And also, for the first time since doing this whole "one word" thing, I'm finding myself trying to talk myself out of it.   It's been a gut check to say the least.  My eyes have been open to an area that I need help with.

This year, I want my faith to increase.  I want to believe and trust more, even when circumstances give me every reason to doubt.  Also, I want that belief and trust to grow some legs and walk.  I don't want this faith to dance around in my head or swim in and out of conversations, I want real action.  I want it to look like something.  The truth is: Faith does.  The truth is, as a believer in Christ, I've been promised some pretty amazing things.  I have a choice, I can believe them and know that with all my heart, and despite current circumstances, they are true, or I can choose to not.  The thing with faith, is there is no middle ground.  I either live in belief or unbelief.  It's black and white.  But if I have faith, and I believe in the promises made, it should change the way I live. 

Completely.