089 - One Word a Day
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If you have followed me for any amount of time, you know that I've always been big on having a morning routine and a quiet time and journaling.
To me, these have always been super important in my life: they ground me and anchor me.
So when I became a mom, during that newborn phase of life, it was very hard to determine which way was up or down. And the Lord taught me this simple practice. It doesn't take a lot of time, but still to this day, it speaks straight to my heart and it grounds me. It's simply focusing on one word throughout your whole day.
For the full episode, hit play above or read through it below!
So Will and I were married for seven years before we had kids. We got married pretty young. I was 21. He was 22. And I went through this transformation during that time of starting out where I was working really late at night and then sleeping in until that 8:00 or 9:00 or 10:00, drinking coffee and then getting along with my day, to becoming a morning person during that time. So learning to wake up early and have a quiet time kind of early in the morning, going to bed early. And I just became really passionate about my morning routine. I got really settled into it. I found things that got me so excited to wake up every morning. I would light my candle, I drink my coffee. And the bottom line is… I loved it.
It was so life-giving to me. I started sharing about it on my blog and social media. It was so transformational. I just loved it. It felt grounding to me and it really connected me to the Lord, which is the most important thing.
And then we had kids. And if you're a mom and you're listening, you know that having a newborn baby flips your life upside down. I mean, you're living in a fog, you're trying to heal yourself while also just giving away your body, nursing at all hours, changing the diaper. I mean, you're so sleep-deprived. You don't know when it's day or night. It's just very confusing. And like I said, if you've been through this, you know. Like saying it's a hard season, it feels like an understatement. It stretches you past what you ever knew you could do.
And it's just, it's like a vortex of time and any kind of rhythm or routine that you're of grasping for or trying to cling too, kind of gets thrown out the window because the baby's a baby. And he or she will have needs at all hours and you can't really predict it. So what happened for me is I really started missing the Lord. I had this really great predictable morning routine and I started missing it. I started missing my quiet times, but I had to prioritize sleep. But I started to feel far from the Lord because I wasn't spending time with him. And one of my love languages is quality time. That's why I really hold those times with the Lord so dear and I'm a written processor. I needed to like write how I'm feeling and doing. I didn't know how to have a relationship with God without my time with him.
And here I was, a new mama, trying to hear his voice and follow him, but not knowing how. And he graciously taught me how simple it is to hear from him, how simple it is to connect with him and to feel his presence and how it doesn't need to be fancy or a routine. It doesn't need to look like it's always looked. He transcends time. He leads us in every single season that we're in. He meets us right there. I remember one time, I think it was with Beaufort, when he was a baby. He was a newborn and I had two little ones older than him, ages three and one at the time. So having a minute to myself with the Lord was really hard to come by. And I remember opening up my Bible and just knowing I didn't have a lot of time.
I just wanted to hear from him.
And I said, Lord, just speak to me, please just speak to me. And it's also foggy, but I feel like I remember hearing him starting to cry and me just getting so overwhelmed and frustrated that the fact that I just couldn't have the five minutes and I probably started to cry. And I just said, God, anything. I just need something from you. Give me anything. And I was reading John 15. I was reading the verses that say abide in me and I and you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he, it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me, you can do nothing. And I think I circled “abide.”
I wrote it down. All I could glean from that scripture was the word abide. And I think I focused on that word, not just for one day. I think I just focused on that one word for just a few weeks. But I remember the rest of that day, I just kept thinking, that's it, like abide. Abide. That's all I could do. Lord, help me abide. I would just whisper a prayer to him, or even just say out loud, like in a whisper as I'm like making dinner abide, just one word.
And the Lord taught me in that season, the gift of focusing on one word a day.
And I felt like that was the way he was speaking to me. At that time, that was the verse I was looking at. And before, I would read chapters of books. I would read chapters of the word. I would underline and circle and pray and journal. And I still love to do all of those things. So I am not knocking them. I think those are very important. But in that season of my life, when I was so stretched, then I focused on one word a day. Sometimes one word for the whole week or for a few weeks.
And I just have to say it was powerful. It was so powerful. God knew the exact words that I needed to read and then meditate on or dwell on for that day. I'll never forget that season of my life with Beaufort as a newborn baby feeling so stretched, then just thinking of abide, abide. It was powerful.
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So today I just want to challenge you just to think about your morning routine, your quiet time if you have one. If you don't, maybe you want to put one in place. If you do, just think about it. Think about pruning it. I know that sounds weird, but what that newborn session did for me is it pruned it all back and it turned it into a gift because I learned to pray when I was nursing the baby and worship God when I was washing the dishes and turn on some worship music late at night and my headphones while I was nursing again. And I just focused on my one word and I focus on the Lord speaking to me through that. It taught me to do life with the Lord, not to have a quiet time and then kind of forget about the Lord the rest of the day.
So I'm just going to ask you again, try to focus on one word today.
Like Lord, what is that word? And if you don't know what that word is for you, you can borrow one of these words. Just listen to this podcast, you can think about abide for the rest of today. You can just write abide, down put it... If you're driving to or from work, or if you're out doing groceries or whatever it is you're doing. If you're just at the house in the kitchen all day, just write down abide on a post-it note and put it by the sink. Think about it.
Or you could borrow the word prune, which that's something the Lord's really been putting on my heart lately. And I think I'm just going to be dwelling on the word prune all of November, because it's powerful and pruning is just the theme that the Lord has been teaching me.
And that's ultimately what I feel like bore a lot of fruit in my quiet time, in my relationship with God. And that newborn season is my quiet time in a way was pruned back. It was almost taken from me so that the real fruit of abiding and listening to God's voice could come through. So what do you need to prune? Even in your quiet time and in how you interact with the Lord or how you go about your day? What do you need to prune or let go of so that you can bear more fruit and truly abide in him?
I encourage you, try to focus on one word a day or one word for this whole week and see if that doesn't help you focus on God's voice and what he's saying to you. And if you are a newborn mama, try this. If you have a friend that has a newborn mama, send this episode to her, because this was such a huge gift to me in that season of my life. I will forever be changed by it. Just listening to worship music in the afternoon and choosing one word to focus on throughout my day is what got me through that season of newborn life, and it has still proven to be one of the biggest gifts that I have experienced in my walk with the Lord today.
Work and Play Cornerstore
Now, it's time for the Work and Play Cornerstore, which is where I share a book I'm loving and a thing I'm loving. I'll get a small commission for anything bought through these links, which help me to continue to bring this podcast to you every week. But the price is normal for you, so it's a win-win.
So today I'm not goin to be adding a “new” book, this one's already there, but it's... It just goes so perfectly with this episode, I couldn't not share it again. It's the book The Practice of the Presence of God. It's written by a monk called Brother Lawrence. I read this book once a year and it truly is about abiding so much with the Lord and really listening to him throughout the day. I just felt like it was such a good fit. I wanted to mention that again.
And the thing that I'm adding to the Cornerstore is completely unrelated. I kind of think it's funny that I'm talking about it, but literally I've used this so many times in the last few weeks. I'm like, I need to talk about this in the Cornerstore. I love this thing. And it's my tweezers. That might sound so ridiculous, but really I use these Tweezerman Tweezers. They're super duper pointy at the very end. And I remember, I think I got them from Bed Bath & Beyond, not even kidding, 15 years ago. I remember having this set of tweezers when I was a freshman in college.
I mean, that's nuts. That's crazy. I still have them. They still work great. They're still my favorite tweezers. Now, if you go look for them, look them up by yourself. Don't get the slanty ones. Do the pointy ones. I would say go to this link to make sure you're getting the right ones, because they are the super pointy ones—don't let your kids handle them—but they just work so well. So that is my thing that I'm adding to the Cornerstore this week.
I'm going to close with one more verse from John 15. It says,
"I am the true vine. And my father is the vine dresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit."
Thanks for listening and I'll see you next week.
