When satisfied takes on a different meaning

I defrocked the house of all her Christmas cheer today. I spun twinkle lights around my hands and I thought of how the Brits call them fairy lights, as if they hold some sort of magic in the spark and flicker of the bulb. I wrapped the ornaments in filmy white paper, and I put them away to hibernate for the next eleven months in the basement. My treadmill hibernates there too, and if not for the shooting pain in my hip and arse, I’d dust it off and take it for stationary spin.

I’ve spent the last few days with my mind running laps in my head. If this effectively negated the ice cream I just inhaled, I’d market my madness. Take a mile of worry, a few uphill sprints of anxiety, and a couple hundred laps around what could/should/never will be, and you’ll fit into those skinny jeans by the end of the week.

My head feels caught between this new year and the last. Six months living on one continent, and six months living on another has me looking back with emotions so melancholy and melodramatic, I think I may have watered 2013 in tears. My one word for last year was Satisfied. And in my mind’s eye, I knew exactly what this should look like. It looked like a heart full of every good thing. It looked like homecoming and feasting and friendships and partaking of a harvest full of dreams. And secretly, in the dark corners of my heart where only I and the Holy Spirit dare to go, it looked like a perfect place where I could will everything I wanted into existence, if only I wanted it badly enough.

I wrestled with Satisfied this year. I thought it would look like abundance, a cup overflowing with milk and honey. Instead, it looked like just enough, like manna falling from the sky as a deep hunger welled up in me, begging to be met. It fell with enough quantity and frequency that when I followed the trail of crumbs, they satisfied my hunger for that day. Not the next day, week, or following year. I gathered just enough to replace and satisfy the gut ache, no more and no less.

Satisfied meant my hunger and thirst were met as I faithfully gathered the gifts laid out before me. Manna and mercies came new every morning. It felt as if I stood in a fallow field, where I saw the grass actually growing greener on the other side. And yet, I received more than enough provision falling from Heaven to sustain me. I know this down to my bones–down to the places that still believe in the magic of sparkling lights and in a God who sees and in the curious ability of inanimate objects to keep me sane and slim–and I am satisfied.

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Did you choose one word for 2013? If so, I’d love to hear how you sum up your year and your word. How about this year? More on this coming soon, when my word finds me.