Reflect & Look Forward: Questions for a Coming Year

Every year around my birthday, I like to take some time to reflect on the past year and look forward to the coming year. I do a version of this same sort of thing around New Years as well, but something about my birthday feels special to me. The questions I go through vary each year - sometimes I answer more or less - but I’m finding a rhythm of reflection and looking forward that works well for me. 

After my birthday I shared on social media a little about the questions I go through and included snippets of my answers to the questions as a way of sparking the answers of others. So many people were interested in going through the questions in their own lives, reflecting on what the Lord has done and looking forward to all he is going to do. 

I emailed a handful of people the document I used, but thought I might post it up here as well. These questions aren’t mine - I didn’t come up with them or write any of them for the first time. I’ve gathered them over the years from different places, journals, blog posts, sermons, etc. They worked for me this year and they’re helping me walk into 24 with my eyes open and on Jesus. Hopefully they serve some of you as well. 

Reflect

In the past year…

• What events took place? 

• What theme or themes did I notice running through the year?

• What filled me up? 

• What drained me? 

Declare the past year completely over. Thank God for what He accomplished, His faithfulness, and the things He did in me.

Look Forward

• What am I excited about this coming year?

• What do I want to ask for and pray actively for this year?

• What’s one thing I can do in the coming year to increase my enjoyment of God?

• What can I do to improve the quality of my family life in the coming year?

• In what area of my life do I most need growth and what will I do about it this next year?

• What habit (or habits) do I want to build or continue building this year?

Thank the Lord for this coming year of life and ask for His blessing over it. Ask the Lord to help me grow in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control as I follow Him.

(PS If you prefer a document you can save for yourself, you can click here for the google doc.)

Photo by the ever-lovely Jenna L. Richman Photography

Divine Reading (Lectio Divina)

Originally published at Horizons Resources

For most of my life I have viewed a wide reading of Scripture as the best way to engage the Word of God. Whether that view was intentionally held or not, I failed many Bible-In-A-Year plans trying to attain the extra holiness in store for people who take in a lot of the Bible every day. 

Around this time last year, I was introduced to a new-to-me way of engaging with Scripture called Lectio Divina. Latin for “divine reading,” Lectio Divina is a series of movements to help the reader engage a passage in a deeper way. This is a practice of slow, meaningful reading and re-reading of a very small portion of Scripture, usually only a few verses. It’s asking questions and silently listening for their answers. It’s allowing the Spirit time and space to move in our hearts. 

While there’s certainly nothing wrong with reading large passages of Scripture each day or reading the Bible in a year (many people I love dearly, including my husband, do this and really benefit from it), Lectio Divina is something I’ve found to be another tool in my arsenal, another spiritual exercise if you will, something to be used to increase my enjoyment of God as I read his word. In the same way our bodies become stronger as we exercise them in different ways, so can our hearts and minds as we engage scripture in different ways. 

Building muscles - both physical and spiritual - is complementary in ways we often aren’t even aware of. For example, a person who does only bicep curls will soon plateau unless he also exercises other parts of the body. By adding other exercises to his routine - planks, squats, cardio - he can begin to improve again. The strength gained in his core by doing planks can help him lift heavier weights with his arms because his body is more stabilized. 

The same is true of our spiritual muscles. After practicing Lectio Divina, my day-to-day readings of larger passages of scripture take on a new depth, and I’m more apt to take note of words or phrases the Holy Spirit brings to mind as I’m reading. In the same way, reading more broadly gives my practice of Lectio Divina a fuller shape as I understand the context of a passage better and how that passage fits into the larger narrative of the Bible as a whole. Each spiritual “exercise” benefits the other. (Continue reading at horizonsresources.net…)

Learning to Shepherd Words

Almost exactly one year ago, I was drying dishes and talking to my husband about an application I’d filled out for a writing mentorship with one of my favorite writers. I told him it was such a longshot and I felt silly even applying, but a few days later I opened an email from Lore Wilbert inviting me into the course. She just announced that she’s offering her writing mentorship again this spring with applications due February 17, and I can’t encourage you enough to consider applying.

When I started the mentorship, she explained how she’d prayed for the Holy Spirit to guide her in choosing the writers who would walk through the course over the next 12 weeks. I didn’t know - couldn’t have known - reading those words that day just how much the Lord would use this mentorship in my life.

The day I finished my first assignment was the day I later stood in an emergency room with my family as a doctor and close family friend shared with us that my Uncle Lee had passed away from a heart attack. The next days, weeks, months all seem to run together in my mind. I considered quitting the mentorship because the timing felt so inconvenient and cruel, but at my husband’s suggestion I emailed Lore and decided to work through whatever assignments I felt like I could handle. That week, between funeral preparation and some of the most difficult conversations I’ve ever been part of, it felt like a dam had broken inside me and words poured out like water - uncontainable, easy, fast.

With Lore’s guidance and encouragement to be, in the words of Eugene Peterson, a “care-filled shepherd of words,” I found myself better equipped to navigate the grief that threatened to drown me. I found myself rewriting words and working out my salvation on paper, easily identifying the lies I was believing about who God is because they were written down.

I didn’t apply for this writing mentorship expecting the Lord to teach and comfort me in such profound ways. More than the writing advice (which was superb) and the guidance (which was excellent) and the comments and corrections (which were grace-filled and oh so helpful), the constant focus on the Lord and the ways we can experience his love through writing were what made this mentorship something so pivotal in my life.

All of that to say: if I could participate again this year, I would in half a heartbeat. But I have a sneaking suspicion there are other writers out there the Holy Spirit has chosen to lead into this experience. Maybe you don’t consider yourself a writer (I didn’t) and maybe you think it’s a longshot and feel silly applying (I did.) In all honesty, I hope your experience does not mirror mine - who would wish the death of a close family member on anyone? - but I absolutely think this course can be just as impactful in your life, your vocation, your salvation as it was in mine.

If you want to read more about it, Lore posted information on her blog here.