For nearly 7 years now, I’ve been asking the Lord for a word for the 365 days ahead.

I’m not quite sure why I started the practice, except that it was probably inspired by something I read, but I’ve found it to be a beautiful process to prayerfully seek Him and see what He has to say.

There's no formula to it, mind.

In the early days, I really did just pray, open the dictionary to a random page and hope for the best; determining that by providence it HAD to be one of the entries before me and reading until one resonated.

In more recent years, as autumn approaches and my mind races ahead to the end of December, I find myself wondering what the turn of the year will hold and I sigh a simple prayer ‘What’s my word for next year papa? What is it that you have for me?’ Then I go about my life, only to revisit the conversation as the final weeks of the year draw to a close.

Sometimes the word comes quickly and something unexpected pops into my head that just feels right. Other times there are multiple options that I write down and try on for size until something sticks. Every now and then, it’s a word that settles in my soul over the course of many months as I look for the patterns and themes of what I feel the Lord has been saying to me and as I contemplate my need.

It's usually just one word, maybe a verb, an adjective or occasionally an imperative, and once settled I take great delight in googling the dictionary definition, noting down every possible meaning, before searching the Bible for references in an attempt to divine what might lie ahead.

What I have found though, is that regardless of what I think the word means and how it will pan out, I am almost always wrong, the outworking of it never relates to my year in the way I expect. It seems I can plan as much as I like, but it is the Lord who determines my steps and who brings about its fulfilment in entirely His own way.

***

Take 2022 for example. My word for the year was ‘Rooted’, accompanied by an image in my mind’s eye of a tall, sturdy oak tree with an extensive root system.

Whilst hardly the sexiest of words, it seemed like a good, solid one and I looked forward to a year of feeling stronger and more grounded than ever before.

I planned to intentionally spend more time with family (family tree), I would make an extra effort to encourage and bless others (rooting for people), I would read the Bible every day and spend extended time in theological study to firmly establish what I believed and why.

I was thrown then, when just a few months into 2022, I found myself crying to a friend because I felt so utterly unrooted.

Far from feeling sturdy and secure, I spent a lot of the year feeling shaky, anxious and on edge. There was a bleakness to the beginning of the year that bled into the rest of it, and I was often troubled and overwhelmed by the turmoil in the world and in the lives of those around me.

I saw my family a bit, but my motivation waned as the months went on. I tried to encourage others more but at times when my mental health dipped, my capacity plummeted with it.

To add to it, at some point I slipped right off a spiritual slope.

Reading the Bible was hard. Prayer was hard. Going to church, harder still. One memorable Sunday saw me cry on my way to, during and after church when I broke down after someone enquired about my welfare and I was consequently rocked in a corner by a mother who is not my own.

I lost all interest in theological study. In fact, at any given moment I found myself plagued by questions about my faith - not questioning whether it was true, so much as wondering whether I knew it to be true. I was disturbed by the thought that there was more in my head than in my heart and became increasingly discontent with the disparity. At many points, it felt like my own mind was working against me which left me uncertain and scared.

That’s not to say that there wasn’t good in the year, but if this was what becoming more rooted felt like, then it was alarmingly akin to burrowing in the dark, zigzagging here and there, largely unsure if I was going in the right direction. More than feeling strong and secure, I felt like I was just pushing through and hoping for the best.

And so, as the end of December rolled around and my goals were long gone, the question arose ‘Am I really more rooted than when I started this year?’

After some reflection, and against all odds, I found myself admitting that yes, yes, I was.

***

It did not come about as I imagined, but I started to see all the ways the Lord had surreptitiously worked this word out into my year:

I became more rooted in:

My Heritage and History - Family is a big deal to me, regardless of how often I see them. As a child, I found real significance and delight in knowing whom I was connected to and how, and so I jumped at the chance to return to the beautiful Emerald Isle after a decade away.

There was something about looking out over the largely unchanged landscape of mountains and loughs, knowing my Grandad and the rest of the clan once did the same that made me feel profoundly close to and proud of my past.

As a lover of stories, I couldn’t get enough of the dozens that were told day in and day out and the hospitality and food were out-of-this-world. After a stressful summer, this trip away was soothing to my soul in ways I didn’t know I needed and I’m grateful for every moment I spent there.

My Body - This one wasn’t even on my radar last January, but surprisingly to me the Lord spoke to me quite seriously about my need to become more rooted in my body. Whilst I know the way of Jesus values body, mind, AND soul, I must admit I am prone to neglect the body part, failing to recognise just how connected my thoughts, feelings and physiology really are. Turns out this embodied soul needs to learn to listen to hers more and stop ignoring what the signs are telling her. An ongoing journey.

My Faith - I started the year with a lot of questions and I ended the year with no more answers, but that’s okay. On the surface it wasn’t that ‘spiritual’ a year, but then who wants a surface-level faith?

2022 taught me that the process of becoming more rooted often begins with a whole lot of uprooting; uprooting of lies, of false beliefs about myself and of the Lord and a tearing away from the things that I can wrongly believe hold my faith together.

The questions, the doubts, and a period of lapse in my usual spiritual disciplines actually proved to show me that when the rubber hits the road, my relationship with Him and His love for me is not sustained by what I do or don’t do, how much I know, how much I pray or read or how I feel. It’s held together by who He is and what He has done for me.

He really is the anchor to my soul, firm and secure. Through Christ I am rooted in Him, nothing and no one can snatch me from His hand and whilst I hope to return to some level of normality when it comes to cultivating habits that turn me toward Him in 2023, I can better rest in the knowledge that they’re not the be all, end all. He stands as the all-in-all and my all-in-all regardless.

A week into the New Year, my word for 2023 which started brewing last September still seems right. For once, I’ve not attempted to guess at what it might mean. Instead, we'll just have to see what happens and all I can really say is, watch this SPACE.

Grateful for you and always rooting for you,

On previous words for the year:

2016: Settle