My word for last year was Healthy and I made some strides in areas of spiritual, financial and physical health. I also came to realize that many of the issues that continue to weigh on me and which I can’t seem to eradicate from my life go much deeper than simply changing behavior.

God has been speaking to me for some time now about value–about mine–how I have a warped view of it and how that spills into the way I value others. He’s been pressing gently on my heart that my perspective is skewed and it is finally time to begin healing it. So my word for 2014 is Healing. Specifically, emotionally and physically. He’s calling me to listen long and well to my body–to hear what it needs to be healed. God is also inviting me to look deeply at the way I see myself and the world–what assumptions I make, how I assign value and blame, what lies beneath my apparent motives.

I’m a little afraid of the ugly stuff I will find under there. I’ve been avoiding dealing with much of it since childhood. But now, with my hand in God’s, I’m beginning to suspect that once uncovered, those big, lurking evils will more likely be revealed as dry, brittle things, long shriveled and dead–looming large only on the tape of terrible thoughts that has played over and over in my head all these years. My prayer is for God to pull me close, wrap me in His love and show me what is there to see and not what I’ve so long feared. At last, I am ready to look.