A year of intention

At the end of each year, I like to grab a journal, a pen, and a cup of something hot and go throughout the year.

I write down the highlights from the year (using my phone's picture album as memory stones) and I also write down the hard things from the past year. This provides me a moment before the calendar turns to January to reflect on the past year. There are things that I would like to just forget and there are other things that I find myself saying “I completely forgot about that!” and find joy in those moments.

Once I have done reflecting, the next few days are spent quietly praying and reflecting on the upcoming year. For the past few years, I have chosen a word to focus on throughout the year. It’s been interesting to see how those words form my year in ways that I can’t even imagine when choosing it in December.

2024 word of the year.

This year, I found a word but kept it quiet for a bit. In one rare quiet moment (we have four boys - I’m not kidding when I say quiet moments are rare), my husband and I were talking about the new year. I let him share what he was thinking about the new year and he mentioned he had the word “intention” floating around in his mind to describe 2024.

I couldn’t believe it. Well…that’s not completely true. I could believe it because God works in these quiet ways that constantly surprise me, but that was exactly the word that I had been reflecting on.

Intention.

It was like a deep sigh.

Intention.

Obviously, no one knows what a year can hold when we flip the calendar to the new year,

but choosing this word, ‘intention’, felt like the things we were planning and choosing to say ‘yes’ to, would have a purpose.

2020-2023 was a wild ride. For me. For you. For all of us really.

Just when I felt like I could stop treading water and my toes touched a rock, something else would sweep over so that my toes again lost their footing and I was back again, treading water.

That’s how I would describe 2020-2023.

Good things. Bad things. Awful, heartbreaking things.

So this word, ‘intention’, was really, a sign of hope.

A hope that this could be the turning point to where not only my toes touched rock, but both feet.

I began 2024 with the classic move of unplugging from Instagram for January. I had already said goodbye to Facebook back in the summer of 2020, when everything was chaos and for my nervous system’s sake, I had to unfollow and leave the platform behind.

So on December 31st, 2023, Instagram was the thing that I signed out of.

I was longing for intention in my days. No more waking up and scrolling and then wondering why I was feeling anxious, dissatisfied, and generally annoyed.

I opened up books and relearned that it was okay to be bored. Great beauty happens in those moments of boredom. I knit a beautiful sweater and hosted friends and family in my home.

January turned into February and I was asked if I was ever going to return to Instagram.

Truth be told, my stomach churned every time I thought about Instagram. I was tired of trying to get all the ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ and new followers. I was tired of trying to live up to this standard that I had set in my mind.

I eventually came back to Instagram at the end of February, but with the theme of the year - intention.

I wanted to share myself. I wanted to share what was on my heart, even if it didn’t line up with everyone’s beliefs who were following along in my little corner of the internet.

The word, ‘intention’ has so much more than social media and this year has been full of a lot of heart-seeking and coming before God on quiet walks and in the moments of my day and asking Him to change me from the inside out.

It has been reading books that have challenged my thoughts on who Jesus is and what it truly means to be a follower of Him. Intention has been conversations with friends and family about daily rhythms and holy habits that will bring all of us closer to God and show deep love to those around us.

There has been intention in the hard, but deep conversations about finances and “what are we even doing with our life” with my husband. (With lots more conversations to come.)

Intention has been in deciding to do 75-day Hard, not only once, but twice, through the summer. It’s been in stretching myself to lift heavy weights and focus on my health after a few years of just doing the bare minimum.

Intention has been being honest about my thrift store habits, pushing ‘pause’ on browsing and just being content with what we have. (More on that in the future!)

And finally, (although if we were having coffee or tea in my living room, we could probably talk about a whole lot more on this subject), intention has been in slowing my days down to create space.

I am still learning what this looks like and how to have one day, set aside for Sabbath and bring rest throughout my week, but this slowness allows my thoughts to take less of a scattered place in my mind and more thoughtfulness. I am able to think about things deeper and with more richness, which has allowed me to do things like start this Substack account.

Yes, I still have a podcast where only one episode is listed. Yes, I have a website, where a few blog posts reside and hopefully a bit more will be there in the future. Yes, I have thoughts about creating something big (which will just stay inward for the time being before I’m ready to share), opening an Etsy store and so on and so on.

All the things, my friend. All the things. (Welcome to my creative brain.)

But here on Substack, I can go deeper than my little Instagram posts and stories. I can share what’s on my heart, in what I hope is a richer way. An invitation to stop for a few minutes, slow down your brain, slow down your breathing, and spend a few minutes with me.

Eventually, I will be creating a paid subscription for this space - for a few dollars a month - but that is in the “eventually” space of my creative mind. Finances are a big part of my intentional year and if I can bless you with encouragement in your day while being able to pay off a few debts (which is a word that none of us like to talk about), then we will both be blessed.

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Intention is a beautiful, strange thing.

It creates focus for us in a world that loves to be chaotic (ever spent time on Instagram reels? It can be just full of noise and chaos and how do we get out of this spiral of watching just one more!?), but it can create confusion for people watching from the outside.

They may not understand why you say ‘yes’ to some things and ‘no’ to other things.

And that’s okay.

Intention goes beyond “a word for 365 days”. Intention is something that we should all bring to our day.

May each one of us learn how to bring intention into how we live - in what we say ‘yes’ to and ‘no’ to, what we spend our money on (or don’t spend our money on), what we are okay with not adding to our schedule to bring rest, how we raise our kids, what we read and fill our minds with, who we are going to spend our time with (I like to ask myself, “do they fill my energy cup or drain my cup”?), and you can go on and on.

I would encourage you to think about one area of your life where you can bring more intentionality and let it flow from there.

I think this is the most quoted line from Annie Dillard, but it’s perfect to end things here: “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

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