At the top of 2022, I accepted a new role in full time ministry. After completing a five-month temporary contract position, I thought I’d be in a totally different place. One of the most attractive features of that temporary gig was just that: the temporary-ness of it. I remember leaving my full time corporate role excited about something that had an end date in the very near future. I wouldn’t be tied down at the end of it, and I could truly branch out and create something all my own. Yet here I was, starting the new year by signing on to a full time role, working for someone else. Again.

In hindsight, there was always apprehension. I don’t think I ever really rested in any of the roles I assumed, temporary and permanent. Looking back over a year later, I’m certain I was never settled. And still haven’t. And maybe that’s something I should’ve paid attention to. Maybe that’s something that was/is speaking to me.

Very early on, and increasingly over the Summer months, I began sensing there was something bigger for me. Like I was called to something greater than what I was sitting in the middle of. This may sound like the typical, cheesy Christianese, but I felt called for greater purpose, reminded of the bigger things that were on my horizon. I felt it in my gut. And because of it, I started to resent where I was. In everything. I’d soon start hearing sermons that would talk about MARGIN and BOUNDARIES – and for awhile, I thought either of those would be the word I landed on for 2023. As the year progressed, with friendships and family relationships changing, disappearing and triggering me left and right, I began to realize just how much I shrank back in my interactions with others.

How much I’d think about what to say, so much that I’d say nothing at all.

How comfortable I’d strive to make others, even at the expense of my own comfort.

The truth is, I abandoned myself for so many years. 

I knew that last year, when I selected BELONGING. 

As I began praying on this whole shrinking back notion, there I was: minimizing my worth, making myself small and insignificant and undervalued. Owning the mindset that I was hidden, passed over, ignored, silenced. 

And I think because I felt that way inside, I created that to be the identity I reflected externally. So when God would show me all of these great and mighty plans He had for me, I’d laugh cynically. I couldn’t, and wouldn’t, believe it. 

I couldn’t rest in something that felt so big when I felt so little, so unimportant, so forgotten. For me to do all He was calling me to, I’d have to step out. I’d have to be bold. I’d have to grow some confidence. I’d have to walk in that authority. I’d have to believe it was for me.

I’d spent so much time operating in my lamb but my lion? Oh, my lion was ready to go, honey!

So for the last 3-4 months, I’d been sitting on this word. I reeeally thought it was going to be my word.

A word that encompassed that lioness coming forward.

A word that was very opposite of shrinking back.

My word was UNTAMED.

Go on, let it sink in.

I still love the word. And it will still be one that I think about, talk about, meditate on. It’s a word that, to me, seems unruly. It seems reckless. It seems unrestricted and those aren’t always bad qualities. 

But one of my favorite definitions of UNTAMED is this: not domesticated or otherwise controlled; in original or natural state and not changed or affected by people.

But three days before I revealed my word for the very first time, it changed. I got a gift in the mail that smacked me in the face. A gift that made me think about all the words that were on my could-be list: MARGIN and BOUNDARIES and UNTAMED.

I thought about the shrinking back visions I’d had.

I thought about the purpose that lied ahead of me and the mission God has for me.

I thought about my previous words – the LEAPing, the CULTIVATION, the CONFIDENCE, the PURPOSE, the BELONGING.

And suddenly, it just felt right.

My 2023 word of the year is MORE.