Like many of you, I spent 2020 in tears, angry, exhausted, grieving, shocked, and climbing out of one valley to the next. When I called 2020 my year of RESILIENCE, I didn’t quite anticipate how it would all play out. Safe to say, 2020 was a dumpster fire riding on top of a train wreck. Still, I was able to come out of it safe, healthy, and stronger than I was when I rang in the New Year. As I look at how I’ve become more resilient through 2020, I am both humbled and in awe of how my faith, friends, and family carried me through some of the messiest moments of my life. I’m not saying I’d like a repeat of 2020—because, dear Lord, no more—but I’m grateful for how I’ve risen from ashes this past year.
I am sure that 2021 will bring its own set of challenges and I feel that I’m as ready as I can be to face them. No matter what it holds, there is one word I’ll be holding onto throughout it. My word for this year came to me loud and clear during an early morning devotional time. As the rain was falling outside of my window and I kept praying for peace and hope. I kept repeating a heartfelt desire for God to soothe my weary soul. In those moments, the word nurture kept weaving through my heart and mind. I decided right then and there that I wanted 2021 to be a year where I would nurture—my self, my soul, and those around me.
It would be easy to take this challenge to nurture on as a way to burn myself to keep others warm because my go-to gut reaction is to do just that. But that’s not what I think this year should be about. I want to nurture myself with good, healthy practices to retain social, emotional, mental, and physical well-being. I want to nurture my faith even more and discover new ways to share what God is doing in my life. As I spend the next year serving as guardian of my nieces and navigating all of the terrains that come with that, I want to nurture myself in the best approach to love and logic as I go so that they get the best version of me. I also want to nurture my relationships with friends, family, and especially my nieces in healthy, flourishing ways.
If this past year showed me anything, it’s how to slow down a little, let go of what I can’t control, and embrace empathy and compassion in a bigger way. It’s pushed me to ask more questions and say goodbye to people and things that were crushing my spirit and reflecting an ugly version of faith. My hope and aspirations are to be kinder to myself mentally, emotionally, and physically this year. I want to challenge myself to learn more about God and what it means to follow Jesus in the most practical ways. One phrase that my Pastor (Kelly Matlock) has challenged our team with throughout the pandemic is to “live with our hands open.” And that has been SO difficult for me—the one who wants to always have a plan, be in control, know what comes next—but when I’ve embraced it, I’ve seen such good fruit come from it. I want to continue in that. I want to nurture that this year so that it can become a continued practice in my everyday life.
With that in mind, I haven’t worked out a formula for this year—just a hope, an anthem, a point on the horizon—instead, I want to lean into what it means to nurture my whole self in better ways this year. I hope you’ll continue joining me on this journey. I hope we can learn together. I hope we can flourish together through stories, poetry, pictures, and adventures. There is much nurturing ahead!
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