This is the year of 2020 vision.
Blowing out the candles on 32 / 2019.
Five months ago, when I was unpacking the boxes in our garage after we moved to our new home this year, I found a worksheet that I filled out in 2013.
The worksheet was called Your Ideal Day, and it listed out prompts like describe your morning routine and what does your environment look like?
You should know that when I filled it out, I was still living in Shanghai. I had a master’s degree but no job. We had no idea where we were going to live when we returned home. We had no savings and weren’t even close to buying a house. It was before I got pregnant for the first time.
I wrote the vision when I had no money, no job, no prospects, no home.
And yet – that piece of paper that I completely forgot I had – described almost exactly the life that I live now, down to our master bedroom balcony and the East-West positioning of our Spanish-style house so that we can watch the sunset as we cook dinner in the kitchen and eat a meal in the backyard.
I don’t know why some dreams come true and others die, but I do believe there’s something about writing down the vision that propels us forward in faith. I don’t believe that we can strive or hustle our way to anywhere we want to go, but I do believe that we were made in the image of a Creator who used words to speak life, and we can use words to speak life over ourselves, too. I don’t believe that we can snap our fingers and get everything we ask for, but I think we can ask for fresh glimpses of God’s goodness and His hand in making a way where there is none.
As Ruth Chou Simons puts it: “We can’t go where we have no vision.”
For the last few months, I’ve been asking God for a new vision for 2020 and the decade ahead. My word for 2019 was light. And it’s light that led me to practice – the action that follows hearing (see: Matthew 7:24, James 1:22), the means of progress, the way of becoming. Practice – my word for 2020.
I see this year as a year of starting small and looking insignificant, which when you’re a 3 on the Enneagram is a hard pill to swallow. I have a feeling that this year, like the last, is going to be humbling and unglamourous. For all the flashiness of a new decade, I think obedience for us is going to look like living simply, slowing down our pace, saying no to the good so that we can say yes to the best, and fighting to practice habits and spiritual disciplines on a daily basis.
We started with Sabbath, but this ethos has rolled out into other parts of our lives, too – earlier bedtimes, fewer shopping trips, quieter mornings. I’m excited to see how we’ll experience God this year, and I’m excited to see how this lifestyle shift will prepare us for the years ahead.
If you have a word for 2020 or a vision for the new year, I’d love to read it in the comments below.