My 2019 Word of the Year: Brave

I'm sitting in the silence of a home that will be bustling with noise in mere minutes. My dog is curled up next to me. My Christmas tree is glowing even weeks after most have gone back in the attic or been put out for heavy trash. Part of me has a pit in my stomach coming here to write today. Coming here to say something that has been swirling around my head for months, landing on my heart in a peaceful way that I know it's right. What is that thing? It's my 2019 word of the year: BRAVE.

Why Brave?

There's something about October with the changing of the leaves and the changing of seasons that God uses in my heart each year. It's when I begin to hear Him whispering to me about the next year and what I need to focus on. It's when I begin to review my word of the year for the last year and land on a new word of the year. This past year, it's when I began to get nervous about 2019.I'm not sure if I've ever been nervous about a word of the year before. There seems to be something so incredibly different about this word though, about this season, about 2019. And that scares me. I don't know where this word will take me: to another country, to a different career path, to a new hobby, to new people to do life alongside, to a clean and organized home (I hope so!).

What I do know is this:

I need to be brave. I need to be courageous. I need to live in freedom and not in fear. I need to be brave enough to accept my body and everything that goes with it: getting rid of clothes, eating better, drinking water, saying that I need a break, truly monitoring my Chron's Disease.I need to be brave enough to stand up for who I am, for who I want to be. I need to express my needs, wants, and desires and not always let my enneagram 9 say, "Yes, let's do it." when I know that whatever it is doesn't meet my own needs, but the needs of everyone else around me.I need to be brave enough to take care of me first. Gosh, does that sound selfish to write or what? For so long, I put others above myself - their needs, wants, interests, etc. Their lives were a priority over mine. The last few years I've had a shift inside me (and possibly in Christianity?) that says that taking care of ourselves is okay. It is not solely self-serving. For me to "love others as yourself" has always meant to put others above myself even when it was a detriment to me. However, I don't think Jesus meant this at the expense of me and my health whether that's physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually.I need to be brave enough to settle down. We've been in our own house for a year and a half now. We still have boxes. When I talk to my friends, they all seem to say they do too. My boxes though, they haven't been touched since the day the movers sat them down. Some of them were never even unpacked in our old place. I'm ready to unpack, organize, and purge. That signifies settling down to me and that means permanence. With permanence, I need to be brave to say that this is where we are. I need to be brave enough to be fully here - in this house, in this season, with these people in my life, etc.I need to be brave enough to invest in me. I need to be brave enough to say that I am worth investing in. I am worth taking classes that cost real life money to invest in my talents, interests and dreams. I don't have to watch others go after their dreams and say that my time isn't now, because it is. I have to be brave. I have to take that first step. I have to put myself out there. (Honestly, I'd take all the classes I could if I could pay in Monopoly money though so send those my way.)I need to be brave enough to have faith. It's been a hard 2018 y'all - losing Oakley, circling around in the wilderness, etc. I need to believe the God of the universe and what he says about me and not the attack of words from conversations that constantly replay in my heart. I need to know that His promises are for ME and not just everyone else.I need to be braver.

Why so scary?

It's going to be a vulnerable year. A year of saying "I don't know." A year of admitting my failures and shortcomings. A year of seeing what those next steps are and not just acknowledging them, but actually taking those steps. A year of believing in myself and not letting my own shame or the words of others bring me down. A year of being brave.I'm not going to go into how I'm starting 2019 off to be braver than last year. I mean, I've sat on this word for weeks now halfway into 2019 before ever saying a word because of how much this word scares me. Yet, I'm also so very excited about it. Let's meet next week and talk about how I'm starting the year off well and what's exciting about being brave to me. It's a BYO Mexican Food kind of thing though. See you there!+ If you're wondering about my word(s) of the year for 2018 and how I started last year off well, you can go here to read about it: 2018: Intentional + Deeper.