I’m quite a bit more behind the curve with this year’s One Word than I was last year. My word last year was ‘engage’ and, whether intentionally or unintentionally, much of my life last year either reflected or was largely shaped by the essence of that word.
Going into 2012, I kept coming back to a word I hadn’t chosen, but which seemed to be choosing me.
This time last year, my friend Alece was kicking off the new year with an idea called One Word 2011 on her blog. The concept was simple: instead of a resolution, choose a word, “one word”, that you would strive to center your thoughts and actions around for the next 12 months. Though I had never done this before, I loved the idea and dove in head-first.
My word was “engage”. I can’t say I knew exactly what it would look like, it is just what seemed to be jumping out at me. So, ‘engage’ it was and off into 2011 I went.
Looking back, I can see how, sometimes intentionally, others unintentionally, the essence of the word ‘engage’ was consistently at the core of many areas of my life throughout 2011.
… or do.
Truth is, my blog has sucked… for a good, long minute. I started this blog on February 28, 2010. In the 15 or so months that followed, I wrote… a lot… chronicling my journey as it was happening. Once I hit June of 2011, a few things shifted for me. Life changed a little, my job changed, the Joplin tornado happened, and all of it together, combined with the momentum of the previous 15 months, left me pretty much worn out and I didn’t really know what I wanted to say.
Apart from the health challenge I was on over the summer, I haven’t blogged anything of any significance in about 6 months. However, while I may have been quiet in telling the stories, I have continued to live them.
Of the 3 primary topics I chose for this blog: faith, life and culture, the one I write about the least is culture. I’m trying to change that.
I’m somewhat of a pop culture freak, love music and movies and am always on the hunt for the latest and greatest sounds that are bubbling just under the surface of the mainstream. I don’t yet know how much it will translate to mass audiences, but my latest musical discovery definitely has my ear.
I just stumbled across James Blake and I’ve got his album on repeat. His sound is like Bon Iver meets Imogen Heap meets… something other-worldly. In short, it’s pure, chilled-out bliss.
Check out the video for his cover of Feist’s “Limit To Your Love”.
Dig it? His self-titled album is chock full of more of the same soulful, quirky and dramatic electronic pop goodness.
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Today is my birthday. Well, not MY birthday, but my blog’s birthday, rather. Today, An Idol Heart is one year old!
I started this blog one year ago today. When I decided to start An Idol Heart it was because my world had turned upside down and I wanted to start telling the story, even while it was unresolved.
This time a year ago, I had just walked away from my career of 8 years, I was unemployed, I was two months in to being at a new church and was a little over a month in to diving head first into a community group I had joined. I was struggling with how to let go of the things I had allowed my life to be defined by and I was falling apart.
On why I decided to name this blog An Idol Heart, I had recently come to understand that my heart was indeed “an idol factory that mass produces idols.” That was, at once, a very sobering yet dizzying realization, and one that still reverberates with me today. A couple months earlier I had finished reading Timothy Keller’s “Counterfeit Gods”, a book that, to put it simply, completely undid me.
Going back now to read what I wrote as my first post a year ago was a pretty emotional experience. At that time, I was so afraid. The false bottom I had built in my heart was falling out and I felt like I had nothing to work with… but words. I had no idea what the next day, let alone the next year would look like.
One year later, my story looks very different. I am now working in ministry on staff at Cross Point Church in Nashville, the church I had just come to when all this unraveling began to happen. The ministry I’ve received at Cross Point over the past year has done so much to heal my heart and teach me who I am. Now, I lead ministry teams there and get to help others. The community group I had just come to in hopes of finding new friends when my world was turning upside down has been immeasurably instrumental in how God has reshaped my life this past year. I now co-lead that group of around 150 people and get to regularly share my story of how God rescued me from the pursuit of myself, challenging others to embrace uncertainly, get out of their comfort zones and be intentional about how they invest in this “stretch between” season of their life.
More than anything though, I am learning more each day how my identity does not rest in where my check comes from, but rather where my help comes from and the finished work of Christ on the cross.
I still don’t know what tomorrow will look like and I’m learning to live by faith daily, but looking back over the past year, I know what it was about. God was after my heart. He wanted to rewire it and “make it again into another vessel”.
This past Friday night, Timothy Keller, whose ministry has been such a key part of my story, was in Nashville on a tour for his new book, “King’s Cross”. I went to hear him speak and also had the opportunity to personally thank him for his ministry and how God has used it to wreck and rebuild me.
He made a statement that I haven’t been able to shake since I heard it. Singularly giving perspective to much of the last year of my life, He said,
“Sometimes, the delays of Jesus are because of details and information that we don’t yet have access to. Ultimately, God gives you what you would have prayed for if you knew everything He knew.”
And there it is.
Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails. (Proverbs 19:21)
One year ago, my prayers were very different. I’m so thankful that God heard my prayers but still gave me what I would have asked for, had I only known. Not getting what I thought I wanted is the best thing that could have happened to me.
