What’s your 2023 In Step challenge?
Thanks for exploring the In Step Pathway these last few months with us. We’ll start a new series of blogs in January 2023 looking at what’s most important to me (Al) in leadership.
An important piece to ending a year well and getting set up to intentionally walk in step with the Spirit into the new year is to review the past year, also called an examen. I plan a half-day to a whole-day retreat and invite the Spirit’s guidance as I reflect slowly.
Silence - I take some time in silence, stillness, and solitude to prepare my heart and center myself in Christ’s presence.
Gratitude - I look back over the year to see what I have to be grateful for and write that out. If it is a struggle, I wrestle with why that is. Even in 2020, with the Covid restrictions, I was surprised how much I had to be grateful for. Count your many blessings, name them one by one, and see what God has done.
Review - I ask myself what significant moments or events were there this past year. I have found it helpful to come up with five words to describe the year. What experiences had a profound impact on me? What changes happened in my life, or what changes am I anticipating? Identify breakthroughs, losses, struggles, and evidence of God’s presence.
Under the Review, I work through this Wellbeing Wheel and ask myself the questions that go with each area, taking time to reflect on the categories of physical, emotional, spiritual, Cognitive, relational, and meaning.
Celebrate and Lament - Take some time to celebrate the year and lament the losses and hard things, even praying or writing my own Psalm of Lament. Maybe you even want to add confession to your lament.
Prayer for the Future Year - Spend some time asking for God’s wisdom, grace, and blessing on the New Year so that you might walk the whole year in step with Him!
I like to pray this prayer of Thomas Merton:
My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
May you have a blessed 2023, and may your steps be ordered by the Lord (Prov 16:9)
SONG: We like to leave you with a song today called Lead on O King Eternal? (Old Style Hymn!) to help you prayerfully reflect on finishing this year and inviting His leadership in the new year.