ONE WORD 2021

December 30, 2020

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One year ago found me feeling excruciatingly lost. The pieces of me shattered and scattered. My identity still recovering from a truly awful 2018 trauma, I kept telling Jesus, “I feel so disoriented and dismantled, I don’t know how to find me again.”

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His whisper one year ago: “In me, you are already found.”

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In faith I chose *found* as my one word for 2020, clueless that God would seemingly reach to the actual ends of the earth throughout 2020 to gather every scattered, still-so-tentative piece of my identity and lay each one tenderly in my lap. Accessible again, all of it. I’ve been stunned and undone, freed and found.

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Yet still feeling mostly in pieces. I had this mental picture this morning: me with a lapfull of beautiful-yet-jagged chunks of rock, trying to figure out how to fit all the pieces together, how to make something beautiful, good, true.

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And there was this desperation to grab onto the word WHOLE for 2021 and *make* it mine because it’s what I desperately want from the Lord. Oh God, put my pieces together (for goodness’ sake—I’m 40! I’m running outa time!).

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And He said...

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No.

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It’s not such a quick process, making good, true art. (The art you’re making... the art I’m making from your life.)

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Trust the slow work of God, was the whisper.

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The slow work of God.

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Slow.

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You may be 40, but a thousand years is a day inside of eternity. The eternity I’ve set inside you.

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Slow, child. Live in this inner reality with me. There’s no hurry when we’re together here. No need to compare your process to another’s or feel pressed by anyone else’s timeline. I define time here. Your times are in my hands.

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Slow. Let everything you do, say, make, commit to, flow from a place of rest and trust in our process together. Reign in your desire to run ahead, and let my footsteps pace you.

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Trust me.

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Trust my work within you.

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Slow.