My Word/Words ~ Recklessly Abandoned

"but for my own part, if a book is well written, I always find it too short."

-Jane Austen

Have you ever thought of your life as a story you are writing?  When given the challenge to write about my one word for 2015 I found myself thinking about it.  I felt pretty sure that my one word required two words rather than just one, but upon further consideration I realized that One Word becomes a start.  Something to build the chapter of my story titled 2015 around.  Thanks to a vision casting Sunday from a pastor I've come to admire greatly, I have found myself contemplating the last day and a half how the direction my husband and I feel God calling our family during this year works with my word and of course like any good story, there is a back story.

I'm not sure if it's unique to myself, but when presented with the idea of choosing a word for the year last year I did not do so lightly.  It was with much thought, conversation and even arguing with God that I landed on the word Pieces for 2014.  Now, personally I thought that God would use this word to do great things in my life.  You know the kind that grab people's attention in this "wow, we want to be like you" or "just look at what God is doing in her life" sort of way.  Somehow that didn't happen though.  Instead the word Pieces became appropriate as it felt like I just watched my life fall apart.  Job loss, health issues, isolation...  It never seemed to stop, but somehow in the middle of all of that God was doing just what a line in the song He gave me said He would do,  He was making my pieces fit.  Through all of the falling apart that was happening He was introducing me to key people essential to prepare me for the coming year of 2015.  He was taking all of the pieces that had been or were trying to be forced together and He was making them fit the way He knew they needed to fit together.  In the middle of my crazy life, He brought a new counselor, D, who challenges me in so many amazing ways but at the same time provides the tools I need to set healthy boundaries that allow me to give myself permission to follow the advice of a kindred, Bonnie Gray, and find spiritual whitespace in which to connect to and hear God more clearly.  He took me back to my hometown using my husband's friendship with someone to bring Pastor Debbie Salters to my attention, who just through passionately following where God leads in a community I know well has inspired me to live my own life very differently.  Being on the 2015 side of 2014 I start to see the picture that formed in 2014.

So as November rolled around I began to consider whether I would choose a word for 2015.  Honestly, after the painful experience of 2014, I will admit to being reluctant to let God use one word to define my life yet again.  But something happened....  One day when listening to Live Like That by Sidewalk Prophets, the phrase "recklessly abandoned" came to my attention.  I found myself thinking about that phrase a lot over the next few weeks and after much debate with God realized that I had found my word/words for 2015.  If you insist on one word I suppose I'll have to go with Abandoned.  If I get to have it my way I use the phrase Recklessly Abandoned.  Abandoned by definition means giving up control, but when you add Recklessly its meaning becomes to give up control with no regard for the consequences.  I think that's why I like the phrase over the word.  I want to learn to live saying no to the less important things in life so I can say yes to the most important things.  I want to learn to simplify my life so that spiritual whitespace and sharing my story (all of my story, not just the pretty pieces) become second nature.  I want to learn to cut out the busywork and white noise so that I can build relationships in unlikely places.

While I'm one of the first people who will argue that life is much less overwhelming when you have some structure and a schedule I want to live holding those things in an open hand, using the structure and schedules to enable me to live intentionally so that I can give up control in the areas that matter most.  Sounds crazy doesn't it? But I believe it's possible.  In 2015 I want to learn to use those tools to enable me to intentionally live Recklessly Abandoned.  

So I find myself thinking that while it seems that in some ways the words I use to describe what I want to do with 2015, simplify, intentional living, whitespace...  While they all could be words for my year, they become the action verbs to my year.  Pieces of a story that God is putting together to create the story of me.  So what's your word and your story?

Cleaniness Might Be Next to Godliness, but Organization Would Seem to be the Path There....

I have come to a realization about myself recently thanks to a friend's personal observation.  After a Facebook post stating my latest project of organizing and clearing out with her response that she does the same thing when she needs to think, I discovered so do I!!  Thanks to her personal observation I have recognized a pattern to my cleaning schedule!  When I'm fairly content with where things are not really challenged to think or maybe I'm just plain feeling sorry for myself, my apartment shows it!!  I suppose I should be thankful God sends life changing events to turn my life upside down every so often so the place gets a good cleaning! 


This year for some reason I decided to evalute the "stuff" I was holding onto early in the year, but certainly didn't expect the mass clearing I've managed so far!  Honestly even at this point I can't figure out how or why I decided to "clear out" some of the things I've parted with, but I know that it was time to let go of it.  For anyone who knows me they will understand that books are my obsession!  Growing up books were my escape from reality.  They were a way for me to travel to exotic locations and different eras of history and live a life in my mind I only dreamed about.  One of my favorite stories to illustrate the importance of that particular possession is the fact that by the time I was 13 I had amassed a collection in the thousands that I did not want to part with upon which my Dad insisted some had to go.  Talk about traumatic!!  If I remember right I was livid and took quite a while to get over it.  That said my Dad would be very proud of me today since while I will always value my books, I have found they aren't necessary to my living and breathing. 

Of course it's not necessarily that the possessions are wrong, but I had to evaluate why I was holding onto them which resulted in the realization that in the big picture they aren't necessary to my happiness.  They take up space in my life that while I didn't recognize it right away has been replaced by other more important things such as relationships, the nieces and nephews I've "adopted", the friends who have become family.  Of course once you find you can part with the possessions you value the most everything else is a discovery in how free you can really become as you stop letting those things rule your life and let God fill it with other things a little more each day.  Now does that mean that there will never be days that the apartment looks less than it's best.  Of course not!  I fully expect that I will be able to organize and re-organize and re-re-organize many times over the coming years, but the way I look at it now is that if all of that organizing means God's making me think, well I'll just keep at it!