align
My 2025 word didn’t come to me very quickly. I had a short list of words and really was feeling more drawn to a different word (Selah). However, as I completed my 2024 reflection, I realized that (maybe inadvertently and definitely to my detriment at the time), I had really practiced Selah (a pause) in that year. However, I wasn’t pausing to reflect or to praise or to correct, I was just… paused. And I felt like it was time to fix the things that were stagnant in 2024. So another word on my short list, Align, kept coming to my spirit.
I cannot help but feel that align is going to be… uncomfortable in the making. When your back is out of alignment it can be very painful to correct it. However, it’s also an uncomfortable and painful position to be in, so even if the practice of it brings discomfort, the relief afterward will be joyful. When your tires are out of alignment, your car drives poorly, but as soon as they fix it, the car drives perfectly again. So I guess I’m committing myself to a year of potential discomfort for the purpose of a lifetime of improved living.
I hope. That’s the idea, anyway.
I need to take this year to get things in order, to “change some things so they have a correct relationship with some other things”. And I feel like I have the tools at hand to work through that, and finally the desire, the motivation, and the understanding of the need to do so. I have a sense that this year is going to be a highly structured year, and that’s what I’ll need to hold myself to the discipline required to get better. I gave myself a lot of grace this past year, allowed myself to be held, but now it’s time to stand up and move.
We worked a lot of puzzles this past week in West Virginia. Well, they worked a lot, I stepped in here and there to get frustrated and walk away. When I first sat down to the giant one in my picture, it was complete chaos with only part of the outer rim done. I looked around what they had done and noticed that in several places, someone had joined two pieces. Just two, not connected to the whole. I said to Kelsey that I appreciated whomever had done that because they weren’t being overwhelmed by 1000 pieces that all looked the same and were laying all over the table, they just worked till they found two that connected and started there. Then two more. Then a string of three. And eventually, those would become part of a larger picture that was forming. Over the next few days, it slowly started to come together. When we left, it was almost all done except one of the bowls. But it took the alignment of two in the beginning to get to the finished work.
A writer I follow, Jon Acuff, has a saying from one of his books (Soundtracks, and I HIGHLY recommend it) that says, “Perfect is the enemy of done.” I get paralyzed sometimes by the enemies of done. I think if I can’t do something all the way, and immediately, I won’t do it at all. But sometimes just putting the two puzzle pieces in place… committing to improving my water intake by one full mug every day… is the impetus it takes to end up with the full puzzle completed.
I’ll not say that I’m eager about the year ahead. It’s not very sexy, not very shiny, not very exciting, this alignment that is to come. I much prefer words from my short list like Selah and Faithful or words I keep waiting to find me like Adventure and Thrive and Bloom. However, I know that in the work there might be discomfort but in the product there is joy. So I’m committed to putting in the work.
Selah. 😜
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