Anchored

Preparation | Obedience | Boldness | Anchored

For the past few years, I have replaced New Year’s Resolutions with “focus words.”

Rather than commit to a list of goals that I created — often without consulting my Creator — I was challenged back in 2014 by an assignment to intentionally consider a word that would define the year ahead.

Reflecting on the awe-inspiring ways that God has moved with the preparation, obedience, and boldness I have yielded over the past three years leaves me in utter amazement. Especially in light of the fact that I have not necessarily stewarded these charges well.

I have failed. I have come up short many more times than I have prospered.

Yet, as always, in the spaces between my unpreparedness and His provision, my disobedience and His faithfulness, my timidity and His strength, there the Lord stood. There He stands. His mercy filling in the gaps. His righteousness forming both the safety net below me and the canopy that protects me above.

2016 was a beautiful yet burdensome year. That’s the best way I am able to describe it. Not just for me, but for many around me.

You may have read about some of the challenges in the few posts I published last year before allowing grief, fear and confusion to paralyze me.

I am indebted to those who helped (and are still helping) me process those hardships that did not make it into conversations within this global village. The ones that came after the writing stopped but before the bags were packed. The ones that came after the plane landed back on US soil. The stories that I didn’t realize affected me until long after the prison gates clanged shut behind me for the very last time. The choices that I made in desperate attempts to forget, heal, remember, normalize my experiences…all out of order…all separate from my Father.

There were many scriptures, books, podcasts, and posts that had an impact on me during this time, but one blog post in particular struck me in an unexpected way. It had nothing to do with what I was going through, yet resonated with me so deeply that I have repeated these words over and over to myself and others.

The cross that is yours is always the lightest, kindest, rightest. And if that seems like flattened cliche, a crock of blarney or a flat-out lie — then the universe is telling you it’s time to intimately trace the heart of God…..The cross you’ve been given — is always God’s kindest decision. The cross you carry — is carrying you toward who you are meant to be.

Now, in a very different phase of this transition, I can thank God for the cross that He assigns me to carry. I can thank Him for lifting these burdens from my weak and weary arms. But most of all, I thank Him for the cross that He allowed His Son to hang on for my sins. I don’t understand any of it, but I do recognize that the cross that was the most kind was that one.

A few weeks after arriving in the Carolinas, I was fortunate to be able to go to a prayer retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I do not particularly enjoy women’s retreats, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was supposed to attend this one. True to the Lord’s faithfulness when we act in obedience to His promptings, it was the most powerful experience of intimate worship that I have had in quite a while.

The theme of the retreat was Anchored,  and while I was challenged tremendously by the teaching, it wasn’t until a short time before the year’s end that I recognized that as the word the Lord was giving me for 2017.

In the past, the words the Lord laid on my heart sometimes brought apprehension, maybe even anxiety. I mean, can you blame me?

With words like preparation, obedience, and boldness set before me as purposeful directives, questions like “what will this look like?” — or more honestly — “what will I have to do/change/sacrifice for this to be manifested?” never tarried in their arrival.

And then when the follow-through includes moving to a developing nation to run in and out of prisons…I mean, I’m just being transparent here: excitement was never my initial reaction.

But this year is different. Anchored is different. Rather than a command or a desire, it is a reminder, a confirmation.

Anchored, in this sense, is not past tense. It is so very much active. It is a force, and through it — through the Lord and His anchoring — I am a force.

When I landed back in North Carolina, in trying to find my footing in this familiar yet now strange and foreign home, I acted a plum fool. I hadn’t driven off the cliff yet, but I was certainly headed towards the edge at 85 mph.

The Lord was loving as I acted in defiance to His word, patient as I ignored the Spirit’s promptings. He never stopped calling my name. He never stopped calling me to Him.

In all of this, the Lord was never hesitant to demonstrate that this anchor shall not come unloosed from that which it is tethered. Winds may blow, waters may rise, but the anchor — and I — shall remain steadfast.

I am extremely appreciative to find immense comfort in my word for this year. A settledness after a very chaotic season. I am excited to be expectant. I have already seen in just the first couple of weeks of this year how God is moving, how I am changing to allow space for this anchoring. I feel….awakened.

So, in my first post in half a year, I’ll end with this simple prayer for 2017: to become and to remain anchored.

Anchored in truth. Anchored by grace. Anchored for none other than the glory of the Lord.

so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain… (Hebrews 6:18-19, emphasis added)