27.

27 & another spin around the sun. This year has flown one into the next and as I begin this one, I can’t help but be oh so grateful for this beautiful life. This year has been wildly steady in many ways, while also a complete uprooting in others. To feel somewhat steady even amidst the circumstantial change feels like a massive growth - this has not been the case for most of my years. 

A few weeks ago, a new and now dear friend of mine asked me if I would be on her podcast - a series about the highs and lows of being in your twenties. While at first I felt massively unqualified to speak at all on how to navigate anything, I decided it would be a good idea to get out all of my journals from age 20 onward — shoutout to young me for keeping them well marked and heavily detailed as though they’d be kept as public record one day — and see what I had to teach myself about what I have learned. (Meta, I know.)

While the main thing I (re)discovered was my ultimate flair for the dramatic, even in writing, I also realized that I have spent the entirety of my twenties in New York. 

I say often that this city raises you, shapes you, and will make you come to terms with who you are and who you are not, where you start and where you end. To have to begin to navigate that at the ripe age of 19 and throughout your entire twenties makes an impact in ways I’m sure I will be unpacking for years to come. 

Splashed across the cover of my journal for year 26 was the word “Selah.” In big, bold letters, I had gotten the journal specially made, to signify the word I knew would be over this past year of life. 

Selah is a word often found at the end of certain parts of Psalms, used to break up the verses. It actually doesn’t have an exact meaning, but scholars have deduced that it means to “rest, pause, and worship.”

In a city like this, rest and pause are few and far between. And to be quite honest, as I looked back at this year, I began to wrestle with feeling like it wasn’t exactly marked by rest, I didn’t really cultivate it. In my whimpering and repentance about this, I felt God nudge me to notice that while my surrounding circumstances were not necessarily peaceful, and yes, I could have done more to protect my rest, the internal whirring that has characterized my life for years has seemed to quiet. 

What I will say about this year is that while it has been a steady one — more depth and grounding in where I live, in my job, in my beautiful relationship and friendships — there was one area that was being uprooted for the entirety of last year. Not fully by my own choice, I left a community that I had always held dear. Through a somewhat tumultuous series of events, I realized that the place I had been was not necessarily where I was most protected. It’s a hard realization to make that something you love isn’t necessarily what is safe, and it was a long journey towards coming to terms with it. (A story for another time). 

All of this however, led to a new place that has been one of the most peaceful, earnest places I have ever known. The whirring to do more, be more noticed, take on more, serve more, has quieted. I no longer feel a sense of urgency that my value is based on my time commitment and my allegiance to anyone, but rather, my seeking of the presence of God and the things of Him. And this, is true rest. 

As I step into this year, in a new, peaceful place, my heart feels softer than it has in the past. I keep hearing this verse, one I want to characterize my year - “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.” Proverbs 21:1.