A new year can mean a fresh start, an opportunity to reflect on the past, and a call to look forward to the future.

It’s also time for one of my favorite traditions – choosing my #oneword for the year. Inspired by Margaret Feinberg in 2017, I chose breathe. My words since then have been: held, bloom, savor, trust, worthy, and anchor.

2023 was a year of wandering in the wilderness, a familiar season we’ve encountered a time or two. But I realized last week that what God called an exodus, the enemy tried to rename an exile. God had (once again) made a way for us to leave spiritual abuse and toxic environments – He provided the road out. We were free (to an extent), but it came at a cost. The oppression didn’t end right away. We were alone, cut off; we had lost so much. It started to feel like the enemy had done this, that he had exiled us. I had to remind myself that God prepared this exodus for us; He rescued us with a road out.

Last year brought with it a different kind of bondage, and since this is a space for honesty: I’m weary. I’m tired of wandering in the wilderness. Our tracks in the ground have have gone deep as we’ve circled the mountain. Lessons have been learned, and I’m grateful for God’s provision and faithfulness as He has been my anchor. But I believe it’s time to march toward freedom (my word for 2024).

God keeps bringing Isaiah 61 to my attention:

“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of his splendor.” (Isaiah 61:1-3 NIV)

It’s a year to proclaim freedom, starting with myself and my family.

I used to think freedom relied heavily on truth. Truth sets you free, right? John 8:32 holds this well-known phrase, but it’s not referring to my truth (i.e. my experience). In verse 31, Jesus says to hold to the truth of his teaching, as his disciples. That’s how we’ll know the truth, and the truth will set us free. So I need to look to Jesus’s words for His freedom-giving truth.

Freedom is also found in His presence. Through relationship, proximity. Where His Spirit is, there is freedom (2 Corinthians 3:17). I need to lean on Jesus and spend time with Him to discover more freedom.

In my feeble attempts to get free from the past and move forward in my own strength, I may have just been pulling the knots tighter, while growing content with the weight of the chains I was never meant to carry.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery… You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.” (Galatians 5:1, 13 NIV)

Jesus invites us to Himself to find the freedom we truly long for. To receive freedom from Him – not manufacture it ourselves.

I’m looking forward to this year, of practicing and proclaiming freedom. In writing, in worship, in loving, in living. In speaking His Truth, in receiving, in healing, in being. Freedom. In Jesus.

“Set me free from my prison, that I may praise your name. Then the righteous will gather about me because of your goodness to me.” (Psalms 142:7 NIV)