They say the way you spend your New Year’s is indicative to how your year will go. Last year on this day, I was alone in a rental cabin I had booked 2 hours away from home. I had called it a sabbatical – but it was really a last-ditch effort to finally quiet the noise around me and hear a word from God about what was next in my life.
I wanted to silence my phone for the trip , but I had been laid off my job two months prior, and I found myself in that moment waiting to hear about a promising job prospect I had endured four interviews for. Each notification pulled me into the hope of possibility and scattered me at the same time. Yet, somehow I knew even then God was preparing my heart for that job not to work out. I still didn’t know what was next.
Desperate to hear from Him, I listened to sermons and podcasts and had incredible moments in worship both in the cabin and out in His creation. I spent those days ungracefully laying down my job prospects, relationships, callings – every last thing He would bring to my mind – was pried from my stubbornly clenched fists. I returned home unmoored from the dock of all that was familiar.
Looking back, I can see the pattern of this year, and it’s true: the way you spend your New Year’s is indicative of how your year will go. I did spend this year surrendering my plans and hopes and dreams to His will over and over again – sometimes willingly, sometimes only after being brought to the end of myself. I also spent more days communing with Him in creation than I ever have in years past. I even got a renewed passion for digging into the Word in both sermons and the Bible.
I don’t know what’s next…but I’m beginning to understand that my resistance to not knowing was part of what needed healing.
I have never really sought out a “word” each new year like a lot of people do, and this year has been no different. But a friend encouraged me to do so. Now it’s New Year’s Eve, and earlier today, the word surfaced almost imperceptibly, but it wouldn’t leave me alone. I had heard it before, but had never really focused on it, and I couldn’t even remember what it meant.
The word is metanoia.
It is a Greek word that literally means “a transformative change of mind or heart”, but actually goes way deeper than that.
This is the word that gets translated often in Scripture as “repentance” and while it is that, just like many words from the original Biblical text, our English translation falls far short of the whole picture. Metanoia is the act of starting again after a marking season or event – likely with a new perspective or fresh revelation informing your next steps. For me, this looks like learning things about myself this past year that I didn’t know, because I was forced by my job loss to step back and take inventory of myself and my life. And this informs my choice to not rush into the next thing. But even that feels like it stops at the shallow end of the meaning of metanoia. There’s a depth there, like standing at the edge of water I haven’t waded into yet.
I suppose that’s why it is my word for the coming year – so I can spend time immersing myself in what it really means and what it means for me. I don’t know what these depths will reveal, but I’m learning to abide here without fear and without rushing.
I’m far from arrival, still at the water’s edge. But I’m learning to trust the pull, even before I understand where it leads.
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