Year of Expression

Every time my sister Bess or I declared that we were going to get a hair cut, my dad would invariably say, "I know JUST the style for you!" and he would spread his fingers and fan them over his head in the place of a potential Mohawk. He'd laugh mischievously and we'd chuckle and roll our eyes. While I do not plan to go to such extremes as this photo demonstrates (although the kissing part might be nice), 2012 is now dubbed, "My year of EXPRESSION!"

A coworker friend, Jill, and I discussed new year traditions at lunch one day. She found out that I enjoy choosing a spiritual focus or a specific prayer list for the year and suggested I read an article she had discovered. In it, the author recommends choosing a theme for a new year. The idea is to "name" the year, either with specific actions such as Year of taking chances, Year of rest; choosing an animal whose attributes you want to emulate like, Year of the giraffe, or year of the butterfly; or choosing descriptive words that you want to add to your life or character like year of beauty, kindness or confidence.

The theme I chose, The Year of Expression, stems from my desire to live out certain aspects of my life that God has been challenging and to intentionally continue building into those areas. These are a few of the areas that I know 'expression' will cause me to live differently than I have in the past:

1. EXPRESS feelings: to acknowledge them in the first place (anger, sadness etc), talk to God about them, talk to a trusted person about them and/or ACT on them- either by repenting of certain attitudes or confronting someone or just allowing myself to cry or rant

2. EXPRESS gifts: sing, paint, play my cello and recorder more often, to write more letters of encouragement, to write more in general, public speaking, pray-pray-PRAY, to learn and use my MIND which has been sorely neglected lately, bake/cook, and experiment in general more

3. EXPRESS life: this might look like choosing to love anyway especially when it seems hopeless or pointless or painful; pouring love into those around me by listening, hugging, serving, repenting, forgiving and laughing; taking dance classes again to reconnect with the kinesthetic-passionate side of me, saying no to the 'activities' and 'service' which I allow to fill my time with enough busyness to avoid facing the hard issues of my life, heart and relationships; and only stick to the people and areas of service that God sees as my priorities

It is my hope that this focus will make every area of my life an EXPRESSION of WORSHIP to my Lord. This will not be easy. I will have to be okay with disappointing people's expectations of who I should be or what I should be doing with this time, body, mind, heart, spirit and breath that God has given me. I will have to be okay with failing miserably as I journey to take hold of the life God has been pushing me towards.

I thought for a while my fear of death was a stumbling block, keeping me captive, but lately I have realized it was only masking my greater fear of LIVING. For almost 28 years, Satan has been working to stifle me, trying to obscure my God-given identity and purpose:
'King's Beloved Daughter named Laelia Catherine Watt (beauty-orchid, pure, leader of the armies); light-bearer, joy-giver, gentle-ruler. Sinner redeemed by Christ. One on whom God smiles.'

In many ways his tactics succeeded, at least in numbing my thrum of life or misdirecting it. In the midst of my darkest times, I felt a pull that, if I would only let go of my fear and trust God for the life he intended me to display, the world would never be the same again. The implications of living such a life both scared and thrilled me.

Watch out, world.

Here I come.

Without the Mohawk, of course.