new year, new word.

here it is.

OPEN!

my new word for 2014.

i'm putting it out there.

kinda scary.

i have to admit,

i like my little bubble.

but this word will be good for me.

and i've been feeling nudged into this place.

i really don't think i can experience and take in all of God's goodness for my life unless i'm open.
opening my heart to His love.
opening my hands to serve Him.
opening my home to loved ones, acquaintances and strangers (eep, i just wrote that).
opening my mind to think outside the box, to experience the grey.
opening my mouth and speaking for those that can't.
opening my hands and letting go.
i want to live my life in 2014 open to everything God will have me experience, good and bad.
like i said, this is very scary for me.
my word from 2013, change, has abled me to see that God doesn't want me to live life like anyone else.
He wants me to live life as me, to embrace me.
2013.
it was a season and year of growth and change.
to be more confident in who God made me.
i needed to change my outlook on life, letting go of anxiety and worries.
i won't say i'm fully changed and done away with those things...
but i feel like i'm changed in that i'm handling them much better.
my perspective is changed and still changing.
i'm a work in progress.
and now i'm here, trying to be open.
open to where God is leading me... leading us, as a family.
eager to see where He will take us and sometimes, a little frightened.
but i'll put my trust in Him, close my eyes, open up my hands and my heart and step out in faith.

"So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

I’m speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.

In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we’re talking about is Christ’s body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn’t amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body, let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t."
romans 12:1-7