It settled in my chest on New Year’s Day. I’d written this long list of potential focus words for myself for 2016, but not a single one felt exactly right. It had to hold meaning in more ways than one, so I’d mulled over options like margin, whole, invest, thrive, vessel, open, rest. Each of these was close to something God’s been doing in my heart, but none hit the mark until I found time alone to pray it through. When it finally arrived, it felt like it came in a whisper:

“Light.”

Light. I rolled it around in the spaces of things I’ve wished for and aspired to in this fresh new year. It feels perfect.

2016 will be a year of light for me, even though I can hardly know in this moment what the next twelve months will hold.

Marked by some of the weightier burdens I’ve ever carried, 2015 felt the opposite of light. It felt heavy, straining, bogged down. Despite my efforts to be positive about circumstances as they came, difficulties arrived one after another, and my soul got weary. I am thankful that we serve a God who can carry us through the dark, and that no matter where we are in the tunnel, He always offers us light and feet for the path.

I’m embracing this, and now I want to live in it. Light.

Naturally, this words carries so much meaning, and I want to lean into it in all of its possibilities.

This year, I will focus on carrying things more lightly and giving the rest up to God.

This year, I will direct my energies into being a light in the world–to strangers and friends, but especially to my family at home.

This year, I will set my eyes on the light and possibilities before me, and put to rest some of the darkness that has pressed me down so relentlessly in 2015.

This year, I will aim to wake more readily with the light, and to end my days earlier to give my body the foundation it needs to be well and stay well.

This year, I will trust that Light will find me, and that there will be moments of great joy that bring healing and wholeness and hope.

This year, I will be intentional to pray light into the lives of those I love.

This year, I will do my best not to sacrifice light in my children’s lives for the sake of time or others.

This year, I will lighten our lives of things we don’t need and work to live more simply in contentment with what we already have.

And this year, I will dive into the places in the Word where “light” is found, exploring its meaning and the fullness of what God might have for me as His daughter in the year He has ordained in my life as LIGHT.

I am grateful for the confidence I can have in God’s promises to us as his children, and I am so thankful that He is attentive to us in the big and small things, even when we cannot see Him there. As I write this, the sun has just broken through an otherwise cloudy day and is shining brightly in my face–a light I cannot ignore and more confirmation that light is worthy of my attention this year.

I pray that you are settling well into the new year and finding your way, just as I am searching out mine. One day at a time. One word at a time. One possibility at a time.

love and light,

molly madonna

“You, Lord, are my lamp; the Lord turns my darkness into light.” -2 Sam 22.29