Year in Review: Freedom and Flourishing
My first experience with listening prayer was when I was eighteen, sitting in my room with its golden and red walls, asking God for a promise. I think I had read a book that suggested the reader ask God what his promise was for their life, and so I sat on my bed and I asked him, my lilac candle burning and January sun streaming through my curtains. I remember the details because the words I received in response still matter eleven years later — they completely hooked me. I only felt a gentle impression, just three words: a lush life. That was my promise. I pictured a garden, overgrown and full of vibrant color, and I felt known. I felt, in my soul, that this was the promise I most wanted.
Seven years later I stood on the roof of a church building in Mafraq, Jordan, and I felt that promise again. I read Isaiah 61 and was reminded that God had not asked me to give up my joy, or my desire to get my hands dirty, or my love of adventure. Again, I felt seen — that God had not forgotten that I wanted a wild whirlwind of a life. I felt alive on that rooftop, and excited, and in love with my surroundings and who I was becoming. I loved the community I experienced in that space and the conversations that forever changed the fiber of who I would be. I tasted, in that moment, the lush life I was promised.
There were moments before and after that trip, though, when I wondered if God had forgotten his promise to me. There were times when I actually felt God saying that he was purposefully restraining my creativity — that it was a time to follow, and be pruned of what I thought was all the vibrancy and color I had in me to give. I have been through more than one wilderness season in my life already, and there were moments over the last eleven years when I felt crushed. I experienced long stretches of time where there were no rooftops; there were no gardens. The life I saw in front of me was not lush — it was barren and used up, and I spent a lot of time confused and weary.
Since I began journaling all those years ago, I have taken time each December to go through my entries from the previous twelve months, and this year I noticed something as I made my way through. I read about my dream this past February, where I felt God saying that spring was coming. I read about the picture I got of a sunflower slowly dying, the seeds scattering away, and then the sun rising up over a sunflower field that had grown up and flourished from the decay. I recalled the bluest ocean I have ever seen from my spontaneous trip in July, and the myriad of times I wrote down what I felt God saying to me: “I promised you a lush life, and I keep my promises.”
I don’t know what happened this year, but something deep shifted within me. Something new sprang up out of eleven years of obedience and tears and ragged, often half-hearted faithfulness. After a decade with Jesus, this year has shown me the beginnings of fruit — of how a heart and soul can radically change when you commit for the long haul. It isn’t an emotion, really. It’s deeper than that. It’s trust. I have seen God move, sometimes in ways that feel good, and often in ways that don’t. I have met him on my knees more times than I can count. This year, though, I began to feel the light of the promise dawning over my life, and I find myself at the end of 2021 full of gratitude for the grace that brought me here, and the people who have held me up when I didn’t know how to keep going. My words this year were freedom and flourishing, and while generally I don’t quite know what God is doing with those words until years after the fact, I can already feel them taking root in me as this year draws to a close.
God is good, friends - and he keeps his promises. Here’s to more creativity, more color, more fun, and more joy as we enter into a new year together. I leave you with my favorite quote from one of my favorite children’s books, as well as one of my favorite songs from this year:
“You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily or have sharp edges or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand. ”