Word for the Year: Integrity
Monday, January 4, 2010 at 4:07PM | in Life Last year for Christmas, Kirk presented me with a question-card that asked two questions: “What is God trying to free me from?” and “How does he want me to live?”
This resulted in a reflection process that led me to a season of active rest.
It was a season of asking God to demonstrate himself as the Father who provides for all our needs. And as I wrote here, he did demonstrate that truth with great alacrity in the first few months of the year. He even repeated the demonstration several more times in later months through the way different opportunities continued to present themselves to us.
And then, as I shared in my life update video more recently, I bumped up against this truth yet again in the way God led me to my new job. (It starts just two weeks from today — I’m so excited!)
Needless to say, the practice of holding an intentional question for the year was incredibly fruitful for us. So this year, we did it again.
In the days leading up to New Year’s Eve, Kirk and I considered a lot of questions. We kept sifting through them to find the singular question that could frame the year ahead for each of us. And the question I kept coming back to was:
“What does it look like to live with increasing integrity?”
This has a lot to do with what I shared in my life update video. I shared about the challenge of the past few months of life and how I eventually completed an intentional discernment process to make some hard decisions about my commitments.
The words I kept using during the discernment process were congruence and harmony. These words helped me remember that I was seeking to unify my inner convictions with my outer life.
In the end, this is all about integrity.
Congruence and harmony concern my commitments. Integrity concerns how I live. Congruence and harmony supply the “what.” Integrity supplies the “how.”
I want to live what I believe. I want to speak honestly to others, and with kindness. I want to represent the truth of who I am always, not just where it feels safe. I want to share who I truly am with those I meet and engage on a regular and not-so-regular basis.
I want to do this with greater and greater freedom, each and every day. Hopefully, it will soon become the most natural thing of all.
What about you: how are you intending to live with greater intentionality in the coming year?
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Reader Comments (9)
I know I said this on my blog before, but I'm intentionally seeking joy this year . . . joy in worship, joy in prayer, joy in change and praise and pain and loss and little feet. Joy.
Live with Presence. Here is what I mean.
Being present in the now and not sacrificing the now for reliving the past, or over thinking the future. The people I know and love deserve my full and undivided attention.
Living with a greater awareness of the presence of God. Meditation, lectio divina, fasting. Anything to get a greater sense of awe and wonder about the God who pervades my every sinew.
Michael Dowd in his book called "thank God for Evolution" sums up integrity pretty well. He makes a great arguement in his book about integrity being the glue for everything. Organisms that do not live in nature with integrity die. Ideas formed out of selfishness and greed, die. People who live without integrity have shorter lives. It is an interesting read.
Take care friend. I look forward to hearing more about the job as you enter into this new sacred space in your life!
@Sarah: I love that line about joy in change and praise and pain and loss and little feet! It's going to be quite a journey for you in the coming year with little Bebop. Can't wait to watch what happens!
@Carl: That sounds like a remarkable book, Carl! Thanks for the recommend. Also, I'm digging your intention for the year. Those in your life will reap the benefits, and you'll get to see God show up in ways you wouldn't otherwise have recognized.
I asked for a word for this year and I got two:
Risk. Trust.
Risk for what I believe God has called me to do.
Trust that He will provide for our every need when I leave behind what is safe and sane.
Risk my heart and my faith, thrusting them into the hands of a God I cannot ever fully comprehend and whom I can never predict, knowing that His plans are for my good. I like having a plan. I want to risk my plan to make way for His.
Trust that His eye is on me always. He has not forgotten me, He has no blind spot.
We have been having similar discussions, asking what God wants for us this year. These two words represent much of what our conversation and prayer has centered on. The overarching principle however, is love: love for our enemies, love for strangers, love for the orphan, the widow, the homeless, and the sick.
This is how we intend to live.
You know, I just don't know. I don't feel like I can speak into this right now. Chris and I are on the precipice of some major decisions that will affect work, locale, and family. This past year, God's asked us to trust him in uncertainty. Lots of uncertainty. He's been teaching me what it means to be joyful and content in the ordinary rather than only in the big events for which I strive. Really, this has been a journey that began the year I graduated seminary--2004. Nothing happened how I expected after I graduated. I suppose that's true in most of life. Chris and I have been talking about the balance between faith and contentment and striving for something else. We're still trying to figure that out.
@Kirsten: Thanks for sharing your two words! They sound so fitting for where you are and have been. I would love to hear more about risking more for what you believe God has called you to do.
I also appreciate what you said about it all boiling down to love. This is so, so true. If there's one thing I've learned through my journey toward nonviolence this past year, it's that it all comes down to love. That's it.
@Heather: I respect your honesty, as well as your continued journey deeper into the heart of God in the midst of trying and confusing circumstances. You and Christ have been on my mind a lot lately. Keeping you in my prayers.
You know Christianne, i think what we talked about on the phone last night has a lot to do with my intention for how want to live this year. Honestly, I am reluctant to say it out loud because saying this out loud sometimes holds me more accountable than maybe I will find myself carrying out. However, I am trying to clear my mind of making this sound like a New Years resolution because I never keep them so I don't make them.
But, for the sake of positive thinking (you know I am optimistically challenged) I will say, I want to live like God is real to me. That is something I did not really intend on saying but it is a thought. I am thinking to myself, "what if I lived my life like God were real and not a 'great distant dictator in the sky' or 'a set of dos and don'ts.'" I suppose I am tired of my get moral quick schemes and all the striving to become...... that I never learn to just be. I want to teach myself to live right now in the moment, not in the past or somewhere in the future.
@Tammy: That is truly beautiful, Tammy. I can't imagine a more fitting way for you to begin moving into the days ahead. Thanks for sharing, girl. Love you.
I love the idea of integrity being how I live out harmony. Thanks for that!