Coffee Shop Conversations no. 3: On Growing

Location: Dunkin', Hobe Sound, FL

Order: Café Con Leche

Date: 2/24/20





Do you pick a ‘word of the year’? I sat around a table recently as person after person said theirs. The last person was very confused. If you are that last person, it’s simple. Just pick a word, think and pray about it, then focus on that word all throughout the next year. It has become such a beautiful thing in my life. As I have focused on specific words, the Lord is faithful to cultivate those concepts in my life.


 In 2018, I chose the word "Hope". This was the year I graduated high school and moved away to college. It was a year of a lot of change and distance from things I had known all my life. I was constantly reminded of that ‘hope and future’ that Christian bookstores love to grace their mugs with. I met some of the most solid friends I could find (a BIG answer to prayer btw!). My life was quite literally filled with so much hope.


Flash to 2019. "Grow" was my choice word for the year. I got cute wall décor with puns about ‘beliefing’ and such on them. I asked the Lord to do something in me, to really grow me. And let me tell you, He answers prayer! I walked out of that year a different person in a lot of ways. After finishing my first year of college, I had the amazing opportunity to travel to the other side of the globe on a mission’s trip to Taiwan. We taught English camps there and encountered religions and customs different than anything we had seen before. Back in the states, year two of college began. I got to the place where I had to give up some things, or everything for that matter. It was a place of surrender, a genuine surrender, a want of God’s will more than my own. I changed my major in school and started pursuing an education degree. The Lord grew me in ways I didn’t expect, but definitely needed.


Now, 2020, a new year, a new decade. I felt the word “Intentionality” being pressed into my heart. As the last couple of months have passed, it’s become apparent to me that intentionality is really just a deeper form of grow. It is more focused, more specific. That is how I want my life to be lived. For too long, I have coasted as a Christian and struggled to get by. Now, I want to be deeply rooted in God’s Word and in the character of Jesus Christ. I want a “tree-planted life” (Psalm 1). Some of the moments of the year so far have been the most difficult. There has been a lot of confusion and a lot of unknowns. And February is not even over yet. But I’m learning to look at all of this with a kingdom mindset. Intentionally planted roots have to dig deep to be strong. God has been digging in my life, in my trust of Him, in my yielded heart. It is only by His grace that this can happen. It is only by His love that one more pile of dirt is moved, one more hole filled. It takes time. And I’m learning to be okay with that.


In a conversation I’ve had recently with someone very important to me, looking back, the statement was made that the last few weeks, even laced with difficulty, had been good. Chuckling a bit, I said, “Yeah, mostly good.” This person simply looked at me and said, “No, it’s all been good.”

That’s how I want this year to end. I want 2020 to be a year of intentionality, one that can be looked back at while saying, “No, it’s all been good.”