Learning to Abide

Thank you so much for traveling along with my crazy stories yesterday - and for assuring me I'm not alone in my embarrassing moments! I feel better with company in my boat. :)

I'm doing a complete about-face today and sharing from the heart. I mean...I have to try to find some dignity, right?

Before I launch into what I want to say today, I have to back up and remind you of something I said a year ago!

At the beginning of 2019, I took a word-of-the-year quiz, even though I am not hugely fixated on that annual practice. I know some people really like to grab onto a specific word every year - and that's perfectly fine! No judgment from me if that's what you enjoy. It's just not a thing I need to have in my life. I took that quiz last year more out of curiosity than anything else. The word I ended up with was courage, and I wrote this post about how I had a feeling (for me...in 2019) I needed to have the courage to wait. Not so much courage to do big, huge, amazing, loud things, but courage to be still.

At the end of 2019, I wrote this post, where I reflected on how finding the courage to wait really had been a significant part of my year - and often in ways I couldn't have expected.

Again, out of curiosity, I took the word quiz again this year. My word for 2020? Abide. I didn't do any major research after the quiz. I didn't dig for a verse to match it. I didn't really do anything besides raise my eyebrows and say, "huh...interesting!"

And then I started seeing the word everywhere.

At first I just smiled when I saw the word and moved on to the next thing. But a couple of days ago, my friend Brenda Yoder said this on Instagram, and it made me pause:

Abide means to wait expectantly. This is a face of resting and abiding. Of waiting expectantly in quiet trust. I don't know quite what I'm waiting for, except I know on whom I wait. 

Hmmm...sound familiar? Last year I was drawn to wait with courage, and this year I'm drawn to wait expectantly while I rest and abide?

Maybe the real word for me is WAIT.

For me, at least in this season, abiding means not worrying. Not trying to rush what I can't change anyway. Not trying to figure out what can't be figured out. Not trying to manipulate what isn't mine to control.

It's about being content to just be. That isn't code for lazy. I'm studying and taking steps forward as I feel led to do so, but in the grand scheme, it's simply about being.

And it's about being content to simply be.

Sometimes that feels like an incredible gift. The pressure has been removed. I can freely abide and wait for God to show me what's next. Other times it's utterly maddening, because I want to see measurable progress. 

Regardless of which way the day swings, please don't think I have this entirely figured out. I'm not perfect at it. (Some days I'm not even mediocre at it.)

I'm learning to go a day at a time.

We still have about 50 weeks left in this year. 50 weeks for me to quietly experience what this means in my life. I may never dig in hard and pursue the word as some might, but I'm interested to see what I learn along the way.