What's in a Word? (2025)

If you haven’t read last week’s post on my wrap-up from my word of the year in 2024, I’d suggest reading that first because it 100% feeds into this year. Personally, my words never felt completely random but I could have never imagined how the Lord was weaving them all together either. Each piece was a necessary foundation to get to this moment and this word.

In 2022, I selected intentional as my first word because I had realized a few years earlier that in my disappointment about how life was going and fear of failing, I’d become paralyzed. I was 100% on autopilot and not doing a whole lot to walk forward towards anything. I was just getting by, which is SO not the life the Father designed for us so off I went choosing to be intentional in as many areas of life as possible… work, dating, hobbies, my spiritual walk, you name it. This required a lot of faith stretching for this often anxious, overthinking, recovering perfectionist which set me up perfectly for 2023.

Because learning to be intentional led me to choose expectation as my focus that year. I realized or more accurately I was convicted that I didn’t have biblical expectation. I wasn’t expecting boldly for the Lord to act. I had faith that He could but I would hedged my bets so I wasn’t disappointed when things didn’t go my way instead of recognizing that the Lord’s way was far bigger and better if only I could boldly let go and let God act. Ironically, 2022 had ended in one of the biggest disappointments of my life so starting 2023 with the desire to embrace biblical expectation was an uphill trek that had me clinging to Micah 7:7… But as for me, I will look expectantly for the Lord and with confidence in Him I will keep watch; I will wait [with confident expectation] for the God of my salvation. My God will hear me. That year taught me more about boldness in prayer and the power of letting God work than I dreamed one year could hold and I felt like I was on a roll. Growing, gaining, doing all the things.  

So as I headed into last year, I knew to be on the lookout for my next word. I was no longer thinking about what I thought I’d like to learn or what I needed to understand but rather I was boldly asking and expecting the Lord to show me… so as this one woman show became overwhelmingly exhausted and the concept of rest started flooding my life, I had a feeling I knew what God might have in store and honestly, I wasn’t happy about it.

I didn’t want to rest. I didn’t think I needed a rest and I certainly didn’t think I had time to rest. Want a confession? Martha and I would have been besties. We would’ve thrown the most well-organized and efficient church events imaginable but, like Martha, the Lord was calling me to rest at His feet however, I first had to learn to rest in general. I’ve always joked that Psalm 46:10 is the hardest commandment for me in the Bible… Be still. I got the knowing He is God part… that’s easy but I wasn’t always willing to stay still long enough to see what He wanted to do because I had a list and a plan. 

I thought last year was going to be learning to take things off my plate, learning to say “no” more and say “yes” less. I thought I was going to give my body a chance to catch up from some health issues and truly learn to rest while peacefully sitting at the feet of Jesus like Mary without stressing over the table not being set or the biscuits being dry. I had it all planned out and then I started seeing Exodus 14:14 everywhere… devotions, Instagram, KLove, Hobby Lobby… the more I hoped not to see it the more it was there and my heart knew what it meant. I literally remember having a chat with God during my quiet time one morning and graciously saying I’d consider that verse but I just didn’t think it fit with my upcoming year. Can you imagine my audacity?

Truthfully, I didn’t want it to fit because of what that would mean for me. See, Exodus 14:14 says, “The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” And I knew that the Lord wouldn’t need to fight for me unless I was in a battle. So not only was the Lord expecting me to learn to rest which goes completely against my nature, He was expecting me to learn to do this while sitting still, not offering one idea or interjection while chaos descended around me. Can you see why I thought I might prefer the “sitting peacefully at Jesus’ feet while singing Kumbaya” option? Let me warn you… this is what happens when you choose to let go and boldly ask God to work and move in your life… He does and boy, howdy, it’s an adventure. 

So what does this all have to do with my word for 2025? Well, it’s crucial for you to understand how the Lord has slowly grown me through these beloved words to this new one… a word that I actually stole from Kristi which is a conversation you can hear more about on Hey Y'all. I was so excited for her journey last year and all that the Lord was doing in her life… just to be on the sidelines to see Him orchestrate and arrange it all. You can’t help but get pumped up watching that. However, there was one conversation over six months ago that made this word become mine…

Kristi and I were discussing life, all the Lord was doing and the interesting journey our words had taken in the first half of the year. This is one of those conversations I’m so glad was through text so I could go back and truly appreciate what the Lord was doing well in advance. I think my favorite bit was when I said “I’m overwhelmed by how much our two words are intertwined this year. I never even considered that rest could be the root of RESTore. Like it’s literally right there in the word and it never occurred to me.”  

You would think after sitting and recording a podcast with Kristi about the words restore and rest, I’d have figured that out but nope. What can I say? I can be a slow learner but I wasn’t blind and I realized restoration was all over the place. I asked the Lord to make it clear to me that this was what He wanted me to learn because I can get sidetracked when I think I’m onto something and did He ever let me know! 

The Lord has wowed me in so many ways over the last  six months but the biggest message He has spoken over me came at a moment when I was trying to wrap my head around what restoration could actually hold. I didn’t want to get hung up on one area or one way of being restored. I wanted the Lord’s restoration and excitingly I realized He had already begun some restorations years ago that I had missed in my chaos but that left me wondering, what was the point? Why the struggle? Why the heartache? Why the frustration? I love efficiency and at the very least, His way seemed incredibly inefficient but then He spoke something to me that has changed my perspective on the past and very much on the future… 

If I had not been made to let go of so many things, some permanently and some temporarily, my hands would not have been able to take hold of what He wants to restore. The things God wants to be a blessing would have been a burden because they would have either been one more taxation on a life already stretched too thin or they would have held the wrong place in my heart. As always the Father, clearly knows best. 

Right now I have so many questions about 2025, most with little hope of an answer just yet, but what I do know is that things wrenched from my tight grip years ago will be held loosely this go round and bits of myself that felt forever bruised and damaged have a renewed hope of healing. And those cracked and broken dreams… Well, they might not be as far beyond repair as I once thought. I don’t know what the Father is up to but He is a God of creativity and perfection so I can think of no one better to handle this restoration project, can you?