Let’s dive in to a favorite creative exercise for the New Year!

You can do this in seconds or spend ten minutes processing it with your journal.  Both are great!  The creative exercise is simple.  Simply consider the question “What is your WORD for the New Year?”

One year, my word was adaptability.  Do any of you remember that post from 2011?  As challenges arose, giving me opportunity to embrace adaptability or run away, I strengthened my courage with the fact that Adaptability was my word–I better dive in and get all that I can from the challenge.  Another year, my word was Restore.  I worked to be intentional about finding ways to restore my creative spirit versus putting pressure on myself to grow.  The season at that time was restorative.

This year, I have two words; Move and Adventure!

First, we’ve decided on the name for our family travel show!  We are calling it Adventure Family™!  For Christmas this year, Brian got me one of the most special gifts ever.  It is a beautiful bracelet that says “Let the Adventure Begin”, and on the inside it has 2014 engraved.  I wear it every day, meditating on this next chapter in our life, drawing strength from choosing to make this my word.

At first the word Move felt obvious because in the next couple months, if (actually WHEN) we have the final logistics in place, we will be packing up our sweet home and putting it on the market.  So the word Move feels obvious.  But it’s gone much deeper than that already.

Have you ever felt like you were walking through thick mud?  Struggling to lift your foot and put one in front of the other?  Feeling like your very legs weigh hundreds of pounds?  I’ve been feeling this the last few weeks.  We have some serious impossibles between now and early March when we plan to start our adventure.  Brian and I are working our tails off and praying unceasingly for these impossibles to be possible, breakthroughs to happen.  But man, some days it feels like we are trudging through mud.  And other days it feels like we’re almost flying, we are running like the wind.  Regardless, I know my creative spirit has to MOVE forward.  I’ve got to keep putting one foot in front of the other, keep stepping into the unknown, keep pushing past fear of rejection, keep following trails to other leads, keep moving.

In the midst of feeling like I’m sinking in a mud swamp, we had AMAZING breakthrough yesterday with FOUR different things!  Just like that, the mud started to break up instead of dry up!  I literally laid in bed and just cried last night, so overwhelmed with how God is always moving ahead for me, even when I can’t see it.  I was so overwhelmed with His goodness and slept like a baby.

I know this year that I will need to embrace, with intention, the words Move and Adventure.  As we get ready to leave our hometown, family, dear friends…as we go to six countries and five continents…as we live nomadic for however long we feel we are supposed too, on days when I am tired of packing and rep-packing, tired of being in hotel rooms, just tired (because even though dreams are DREAMY, they require more work than not dreaming–and don’t let anyone else convince you otherwise!), I’ll embrace the words Move and Adventure–knowing that even though my creative spirit may tire, I’m exactly where I need to be.

What about you?  Try this creative exercise for the New Year!   Take a second to leave your answer in the comments or take ten minutes to journal about it. Take some time to find a way to capture it with your camera.  And please share!  There is no right or wrong.  There is only now.

What Is Your Word(s) for 2014?

xo,

m