Grateful and Intentional

Home for the Holidays

It’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that this is my last blog post of 2023. Russ and I have spent all of December talking about how quickly this year flew by–I feel like we said that at the beginning of each new month, a collective: where did this month go?

We’re gearing up for 2024, and it’s going to be a BIG year around here. I’m working on my manuscript and hope to have it to my publisher in the next month. Then, I have to brace myself for the joy commonly referred to as editing and revising before the excitement of launching my book baby into the world.

It’s going to be a wild ride for sure.

I’ve never had a “word of the year” before this year, and in true Kristen fashion, I couldn’t land on just one word, so I had two: balance and focus.

Those were good for me. When I found myself feeling a little off-kilter or overcommitting, those words would find their way back into my brain, and I would feel myself calming and settling. 

When November arrived, I felt God nudging me toward gratitude in a bigger-than-ordinary “30 days of gratitude” social media challenge. I heard God reminding me that gratitude needs to be a way of life. Even though I was working on my manuscript, I stopped for a few days to create this daily gratitude journal. I talked about this a few weeks ago, but if you missed it, it’s a daily journal that begins with a verse or two from the Psalms, gives you a place for reflection, and has an area for you to jot down your gratitude list. It’s completely fillable and has a different verse every day, and I know I need to commit to beginning my day with it. If you’d like it, you can have it too! It’s Free! And you can download it right here!

As December was approaching, I was struggling with a Christmas series. I kept thinking I would update my series from last year and call it a day, but every time I would sit down to do that, it just didn’t feel right. Instead, the word “intentional” kept popping into my head. I kept thinking about how chaotic this time of year is, and I couldn’t understand how we need to be intentional about the holidays.

When I sat down to write this post, I thought I was writing a post about the need for intentional rest, but I suppose the joke’s on me because as I started writing, that’s not at all  what went down on paper. Instead, I found myself reflecting on my words of 2023 and being led to my focus for 2024 which is evidently both being intentional and being grateful.

Why Intentional?

I’ve talked at length over the last couple of months about why gratitude is important and how I want to make it a part of my daily life in 2024, but I haven’t touched much on the importance of being intentional.

I’ve seen this post on social media from multiple content creators over the past few months that talks about how we need to normalize praising people for starting over in their 40s, for starting new jobs in their 50s, and for chasing their passion in their 60s. 

At the end of the last post I saw, there was an additional explanation that said the success we chase in our 20s and 30s is the success the world tells us to chase, but the success we chase in our 40s, 50s, and 60s is truly the success we desire and the success we should have been chasing all along.

I spent decades of my life chasing what the world saw as success instead of chasing the success and passion I  should have been chasing. The main difference between these for me is that one is automatic and one is intentional. 

When I sought what the world told me I needed to be successful, it was simply an automatic response. It was expected–go to college, get a degree, get a job, move up the ladder, get more degrees, be a leader, blah, blah, blah. Get married, have kids, buy a house, get a nice car, do all the things.

It was autopilot for me.

Never intentional.

Simply ticking off the next box the world told me I should tick off.

That is no way to live.

I quit living like that quite a few years ago, and, now, I listen more keenly and try to follow a little more obediently–intentionally, if you will.

I don’t think it’s coincidental that God is nudging me toward being more grateful and more intentional as I head into such a BIG year ahead.

I’ve found that when I pay attention and follow where the nudges lead me, life is infinitely better–not always easier, but infinitely better.

The Nudge

In John 14:15-17, Jesus tells his disciples:

“Loving me empowers you to obey my commands.  And I will ask the Father and he will give you another  Savior,  the Holy Spirit of Truth, who will be to you a friend just like me—and he will never leave you. The world won’t receive him because they can’t see him or know him. But you know him intimately because he remains with you and will live inside you.

I think some people get awkward when it comes to talking about the Holy Spirit, but Jesus didn’t mince words when he explained to his disciples that the Holy Spirit would be their constant friend, that he would guide them in the truth, and that they would know him intimately because he lives in them. 

Whenever I get those nudges that I know aren’t coming from my soul, I know that it’s the Holy Spirit, and I’m confident that if you open your mind and heart to those nudges, you’ll begin to feel them as well.  You probably won’t always like them because they aren’t always easy, but you’ll feel them and you’ll know they aren’t from you.

It was only by the grace and guidance of the Holy Spirit that I was able to unravel and disentangle myself from the terribly faulty and flawed theology I grew up believing! So, those of you in that hard and seemingly impossible place of deconstruction and reconstruction, take heart! There is help for this journey. 

As you prepare to begin a new year, I pray that you will open yourself up to the nudges of the Holy Spirit, that you would listen to what it is God is whispering to you through those nudges, and that you will have a clear picture of what God wants you to intentionally focus on during this upcoming year.

Reflections:

1. What are some things you want to focus on in 2024?

2. What does the nudge of the Holy Spirit look like in your life?