Tackling the New Year with Intentionality

It is 2020! Does that sound futuristic to anyone besides me?

I’m already getting asked if I’m making New Year’s Resolutions. So here are some posts from me and others on how to tackle the New Year intentionally.

Reflect on the Past Year
Look at your journals, sermon notes, the Scriptures you’ve read, and the songs you’ve downloaded or listened to on YouTube. Reflect on any common themes, or repeated verses.

Focus Roles
I started talking about creating focus roles rather than resolutions end of 2010, where I shared about my “breakout year” and how you too could have one. This post includes making “SMART” goals.

In 2012, I shared more about this concept as well as my focus roles for the year and created goals around that.
Creating Focus Roles
My Focus Roles for 2012
Why Make Goals At All

Psalm of the Year
In 2013, I choose Psalm 25 as my “Psalm for the Year,” and basically studied that for the year.

God’s Character
In 2014, I wrote this post “Wherever You Go, There You are” where I shared about shifting our focus from the “Change Your _____, Change Your Life!” game to “Change Your Perspective, Change Your Life” where we focus on who He is in order to become who He created us to be.

On October 8, 2014, I had a baby (my Jordan River Assignment) who had developmental delays and well, I kind of stopped thinking about much else 🙂 As you could tell by my sporadic blogging for several years!

Song for the Year
In 2017, I chose a song for the year, focusing on the theme of “Make My Life a Prayer To You.”

Word of the Year
The past several years, I’ve chosen a “word” of the year, something I feel summarizes what I need to work on or what area of my life God is currently speaking to me about. I honestly don’t know where I heard about it, but Crystal Paine talks about it a lot.

My word for 2018 was “present” as I strived, with God’s help, to simply stay present with my kids. I also read the whole Bible that year.
My word for 2019 (well, 2 words) was unstuck/beloved. It was also a year of digging deep into God’s Word, as well as working on improving my health after being diagnosed with a chronic (but not life-threatening) condition.

Here is a post from end of 2018 about why you should choose a word of the year from Crystal Paine, or an article from elsewhere about 4 Tips on Choosing a Word for the Year. I’m fairly certain I have my word for the year for 2020, which I might share in the future 🙂

So you see there’s a lot of ways to go about being intentional with our time and attention in 2020. Prayerfully consider picking one or several!

An Image from This Church


Leave a Reply