You know how people choose words for the year sometimes? I’d tried it once before, but I never really got it and my word didn’t seem to have anything to do with my year.  But on New Year’s Eve this year, I decided to try it once again.

I prayerfully wrestled through a few options, and I finally decided on “roaring” as my word for the year. That night — at 10:52 PM to be exact — I texted the following to my best friends:

“I think my word is… roar. I’ve gotten too safe in my faith and life. It’s time to dream big again. And I refuse to back down from the enemy that threatens my heart and family. And so many of my friends.

“And roaring means worshipping because that’s how you win battles.

“It means being purposeful while I wait, and stepping in confidence even when I don’t know where I’m going.”

As I’ve experienced physical healing over the past year, and linked with that, emotional healing, I’m getting more and more excited to charge into whatever is next in my life roaring. I’ve been in isolation and fighting a battle in silence for so long, and I’m ready to jump into the world. Terrified, yes. But desperate to start roaring again and dreaming again and living in freedom from my illnesses.

But even back on December 31st, 2019, I think I realized that roaring was going to look different than I imagine. Since Diamonds 2020 finished at the end of January, I spent February focusing on — well, focusing on refocusing.

Recentering myself and seeking to get my heart in the right place. Not that I think it was in the wrong place, but too often how our hearts get in the wrong place is by not refocusing them regularly.

And honestly, this had felt more like roaring than speaking in front of hundreds of chronic illness warriors about God felt. If I’m being totally honest. Yes, that felt like roaring. It was roaring.

But worship is roaring too. Waiting is roaring too. Resting is roaring too.

Read those three sentences again. Seriously. Guys, this is a lesson God’s been teaching me probably all my life. But somehow it had never sunk it the way it has this month.

We live in a culture that idolizes productivity. If you are “productive” by human standards, you have it all together. The person who binge-watches or spends all their time on social media is the norm, but the person who accomplishes things is respected and honored.

Spending this month working really hard to establish the “rhythms of a healthy soul” into my life has been helping me grow by leaps and bounds. It’s improved my spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical health. I’m able to work harder because I’m learning for the first time to rest well.

You know what? The other day, music was playing, and I was snapping in time with it, and someone asked me: “Why are you snapping?”

“What wrong with snapping?” I turned to look at her.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“Nope!” I laughed a little at that one.

“Then why are you snapping?”

That caught me by surprise. “I don’t have to have a significant other to be happy!”

“True,” she conceded.

But honestly, that was a high compliment. The more I’ve taken care of my soul and focused on implementing healthy rhythms into my life, the more people start to notice.

When you spend time with God, even when it’s reading twenty chapters of Deuteronomy, and you take care of yourself the way He created you to be taken care of, it makes a difference.

It’s not easy. It’s a hard spiritual battle. And just because I’m filled with unexplainable joy sometimes, all too often I’m also filled with discouragement, doubts, and frustration. Resting and worshipping and waiting is seriously hard work.

Today I was crying over potatoes, still grieving what illness stole from me a year after starting the grief process.

But maybe that’s what makes it roaring. Taking care of yourself counts a roaring too. And before I can travel the world or speak at conferences or raise a family like my heart longs to, I need to learn how to take care of myself. Because to roar in those big things you have to roar in the “small” things.

I think of Simba from The Lion King. Remember how he tried to scare those hyenas with his baby-lion roar? His first try came out sounding like a grumpy housecat. But then the hyenas told him to try again, and a full-grown roar sounded.

Except . . . the roar didn’t come from Simba. It came from his father, Mufasa, the king. Our roars aren’t supposed to come from us either. Our roars can tend to sound like grumpy housecats. Heartfelt, but not very effective.

Yet if we let our Father in Heaven roar for us, people listen. It makes a difference. All we need to do is obey the King.

So, yeah. Thanks for reading my jumbled thoughts. That’s some of what God has been growing me in and pressing into my heart the last month. I don’t know where you’re at in this journey we call life. Maybe right now your roaring looks pretty epic. But you are exhausted. Maybe your roaring looks like getting out of bed every morning and going through the motions. Maybe it is somewhere in between. No matter where you’re at, please don’t forget the behind the scenes stuff that makes roaring successful and sustainable.