I had dinner with a few of my closest friends a couple of weeks before Christmas and an interesting topic came up.

What is your “word” for the new year?

I’d never even thought of that for myself.  I know many people who pray and ask God for direction for the new year coming up but I have always struggled with that….always feeling like every year is just the same…nothing new to look forward to especially….just more of the same.  But this conversation stirred something in me.  If you read this blog, you know that the last half of this year has been really hard.  I haven’t been shy about sharing my struggles.  So why would this suddenly pique my interest?  Isn’t 2015 just going to be more of the same struggle?  Daily trudging through the mud to get to higher ground….eventually?  I know….what a pitiful outlook!  I’m reading those words and thinking that is just awful….hopelessness in black and white.  Jeez.

So I started asking God.

It was a trickle at first.

I remembered to ask God a couple of times over the next week what word He wanted to give me for the coming year.

Then it grew.

I was thinking of it several times a day.

Now it is constant.

I have been asking constantly for the last three days.

And He has given it to me.

And I am stunned.

Abandoned.

 

Abandoned.

What?

Do you know what abandoned means God?  Really?

Abandoned means: having been deserted or cast off; forsaken; stranded; rejected.

How on earth could He give me the word that has been the theme of my life in 2014??  This word has consumed my life and my thoughts for more months than I would like to admit.  I have caved to the emotion of it nearly every day for several months.  This.  Is.  Not.  Possible.  What are you doing God??

And then I had someone close to me speak some hard truth in a texting conversation.

“Have you considered,” she said, “that this pain is FOR you too?  That God is trying to tell you that your need is not in man, it’s in Him?  That He’s just trying to show you how to be completely ABANDONED in Him?”

At first I was angry at her.  I got real quiet, real quick.  Why should I have to give up the needs that God placed in me?  Let go of the longings that come along with the personality that God placed in me??

But I chewed.  And I chewed hard.  I heard that word used in this context 5 more times in the next 3 days.  Okay.  Now I was listening.  So I looked it up.  Here is the second definition…

Abandoned:  Uncontrolled or unrestrained.  Out of control.  Uninhibited.

Wow.  Unrestrained.  Out of control.  I’m feeling a bit uncomfortable now.  God already talked to me about giving up control last September.  Been there.  Done that…..Okay.  Maybe not.  Where do I go now?

And He said very quickly and loudly…

I get abandoned.  Completely.  To God.  I stop trying to force conversation.  I stop trying to get attention.  I stop trying to change hearts with my words.  I stop.  I just stop.  I let go.  I get quiet and I get abandoned.  To God.  Scary.  Very, very scary.  But it makes more sense than I ever would have thought.  It’s time.  It’s time to let go.  All the way.  It’s time to let God do what He’s gonna do without my manipulation and interference.  It’s time to stop talking about letting go.  It’s time to let go in the deepest places that I have.  It’s time to let God break in and have His way.  All the way.

I have no idea what this is supposed to look like.  I may seem crazy.  God is already asking me to stand for things that the world thinks I “have a right” to give up on.  But today I am saying to you all, however many there are of you, that I am standing.  I am abandoning myself to Him in obedience in 2015.  No more looking downward and trudging through the mud to get to the next hope of a breakthrough.  I am looking up and choosing to work through my grief and get fully abandoned to the One who loves me.  I am looking up and asking God to break in.  I am telling the evil one to get out of my home, my thoughts, my family.  I am choosing to be uninhibited by the former things that chained me down.  And I am getting fully abandoned.

FULLY.  ABANDONED. FOREVER.