Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

new year's resolutions

New year, new word

Every year since 2013, I’ve picked one word that I want to focus on, a guide for the year to come. (You can see all the words I’ve chosen and reflections on those years here.) It still sounds too simple to be effective, but at the end of each year, I can testify to the changes these words have brought about in my life.

This last year might be the year that I’ve written the least about my word and its impact on me. In December of 2016, after life circumstances left my heart feeling hard and impenetrable, I chose to focus on “tender.” I needed to let in the things that hurt. I needed to feel things deeply. I wanted my heart to break in the kind of way the ground needs to be broken every spring in preparation to receive a seed that will grow up from the dirt. 

When I look back on the year, there was heartbreak, for sure, circumstances I didn’t understand. We started the year with my husband unemployed and then the transmission went out in our van. After my husband found a job, his unemployment compensation was denied and we ended up needing to fight the decision months into the new year. A project I had emotionally invested in fell through. We struggled to dig out of a financial hole, and when we desperately wanted to take steps forward on buying a home, we were denied a loan.

These things stirred up a lot of bitterness and resentment and while I would normally want to just stuff those feelings right back down, all of these disappointments were like manure spread across my heart, making the ground more fertile. (Can I put in a plug for regular appointments with a therapist or counselor? My therapist’s office became the place that my heart busted open again and again as we turned over things I thought I had buried.)

Before I chose to be more tender, I feared what would happen. I worried that cracking my heart open just a little would break me completely until I was shattered–like innumerable pieces scattered across the kitchen floor. I was cracked, yes, and I was broken, yes, but I learned that I could be pieced back together. Different. Stronger, somehow. 

And having survived being broken once, I dared to let my heart break again.

It started a couple of years ago with refugees. I opened my heart. I took action. And they have changed my life. This year I took another step and started learning about racial injustice and how to be part of the reconciliation process. (Mostly I’m just learning and rethinking everything I’ve been taught.) Late this summer, my concern moved toward undocumented youth, those whose parents brought them to the United States illegally but whose entire lives have been lived here. They are fighting for a path to citizenship and I stand with them in that fight.

I ended 2017 softer than I thought possible but also stronger. My heart is not a bitter, barren place, and though there is much work to be done where justice is concerned, I am encouraged and energized by the things I’ve seen, the people I’ve met, the stands I’ve taken. Tender shoots of something green are growing in the soil of my heart again.

Where all of this will take me in 2018, I really don’t know. I have a lot to learn, and I don’t do nearly enough of the kind of work I think I ought to do where advocacy is concerned. But if 2017 was an internal decision to open myself up to caring about people and causes I hadn’t previously considered then 2018 is about getting out of my seat and standing, walking, singing, shouting, and doing more of what I see others doing. It is about sharing the tweets and opinions I’ve been too scared to share because someone might not like it. I’m not out to divide. I’m physically ill when I lose “friends” or get into arguments online (or in person).

But this year I also learned more about my personality (I’m a 9 on the Enneagram if you’re familiar) and my tendency is to keep the peace at all costs. To bury my head in the sand when the shots are flying. To engage in all kinds of diversions when I don’t want to feel one.more.thing.

That ends in 2018. (Or it lessens. Let’s be real.)

So my word for the year is “awake.” I am waking up to myself, my needs, my abilities. I am waking up to the world around me. I am waking up to the ways my upbringing was different than those in other parts of the country. I am waking up to the realities of life. I am vowing to live with my eyes open, to not turn away when what I see is too hard/messy/brutal. (And also to not turn away when it is too lovely/sparkly/beautiful. I have a problem seeing that, too.)

I want to live this life intentionally, not drifting along waiting for something to happen to me. (This is mostly a work-related vow. I will write more about this later.) I am a daydreamer by nature and if I’m looking at you, sometimes I’m not seeing you at all. I’m living a story I’ve made up in my head or thinking about a conversation I had last year. It’s going to be hard work for me to recognize this as it’s happening and pull myself out of it to be fully engaged with the person right in front of me.

So, this is me. And this is my work for the year. Awake.

What about you? Do you ever pick a word to focus on for the year? If you need some help getting started, I recommend the community over at OneWord365. (Join the Facebook group also!)

Stay tuned. It’s going to be an eyes wide open kind of year.

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One word leads to another {A OneWord365 wrap-up and announcement}

I’ve been choosing one word to guide my year since 2013.

That first year was “release,” a time of letting go, and it was followed a year later by “enjoy.” The year I was meant to enjoy the life in front of me didn’t turn out that way exactly because I realized something along the way. And that led to my 2015 word, which was “whole.” That was a winding road full of unexpected twists, and at the end of the year I felt undone more than done, which I think was the whole point, pun intended.

Which brings us to 2016 and the year that is almost ended. My word this year was “present” and I always begin the year with high hopes.

My goal this year was to be more awake to the life right in front of me, to not distract myself all the time with escapist fiction or dulled senses. And this year, like it was for so many, was full of opportunity to feel deeply. And that is as painful as it sounds.

This year, I faced a multi-week back injury at the beginning of the year that reduced my world to one room of the house and counting the number of steps to the bathroom. I zoned out with Netflix because I literally couldn’t go anywhere, but I became more aware of my immediate surroundings. It was an unintentional introduction to being present.

For Lent, I took a break from reading fiction, which is too often an escape for me, and I had hard time going back to books that are purely entertaining and not challenging in some way. I still read fiction, but it’s different for me now.

In the middle of the year, my grandfather died, and I felt ALL THE GRIEF of loss. I cried like I’ve never cried before. Publicly. Unashamedly. There was a time when I might have tried to fight it. To hide the pain. But I let it go. I still am.

Then there was the election. And the war in Syria. And other people’s grief and loss. I felt it right along with them, sometimes crying for seemingly no reason but later pinpointing it to taking on others’ emotions.

One night, I clearly remember feeling so much sadness and loss, and I really wanted to drink a glass or two of wine to dull what I was feeling. But I chose not to. Instead, I let myself feel. And I was better for it.

Which leads me to the word I want to live for 2017.

See, this last feature of being present, this caring about other people’s pain and losses is something I still need to work on. Most of the time, I am so focused on my own troubles and problems that I turn off my caring for other people because I don’t think my heart can handle it.

What I learned from being present this year (and from seeing the movie Inside Out) is that feeling something–even sadness, even pain–is an important part of life.

I have long admired this quote by C.S. Lewis because I struggle with the eventual pain of loving and losing. It goes like this:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

I don’t want my heart to harden because when it does, I become someone I hate. I have no pity or compassion for people. I reek of bitterness about my own circumstances in life. I shut down, like a turtle receding into its shell so nothing can hurt it.

That is not how I want to live life.

Knowing now what I do about what a year can bring, especially when I choose to focus on a word and how it will eventually change me, I am nervous and scared.

But the word I need this year, the only word that makes sense to me is this:

I have high expectations for myself and others, so I want to be tender, gracious with myself. I am learning to set high and challenging goals, yes, but to be kind to myself when I don’t meet those goals or take the steps easy as they come and to not beat myself up or call myself names. I can’t do it all. I can’t control it all. So, I need to be tender towards myself.

And I need to keep my heart on the soft side. It most certainly will get bruised. Maybe even punctured. But I’ve lived enough days with the impenetrable heart to know that loving and caring, even if it means losing and hurting, is worth more than a heart that feels nothing.

Hate is in excess these days. There are people and groups I want to hate because they are hateful. But more hate won’t solve anything. I wrestle with this, too. To be tender is not the same as “going soft,” though. I think certain behaviors, actions, beliefs, circumstances require a toughness. And I still want that to be there. But I don’t think I can be only tough. In fact, I think I need the toughness and the tenderness to work together. I’m sure I’ll have more to think about with that as the year progresses.

I just know that when my heart starts to solidify, which it started to do after the election, the tenderness is what saves me. When I’m anxious, being kind to others is an antidote. I can’t explain it, really, but I find it easier to be the opposite of whatever the prevailing emotion is. When shoppers are frantic and I’m anxious about joining them out in public, I remind myself to be patient and kind, and it helps me. When hate and fear spew from the TV, I throw myself into volunteer work with refugees and school children. It is tenderness in thinking of others and giving my time to them that keeps my rising anger and frustration from bubbling into a steaming outburst.

I don’t know what else I will learn about tenderness and being tender this year. But I know that I will learn about myself and God in the process. Because He, too, is tender, despite what we sometimes want to think.

Despite all the unexpected turns, I have not regretted this choice of focusing on one word for an entire year. It has changed me more than any New Year’s resolution ever has.

Won’t you give it a try this year? The word is totally personal to you and your circumstances, and sometimes it seems the word chooses me before I can choose it. Give it some thought. And let me know what you pick. It’s going to be a transformative year.