Let’s Live Loved This Year

Every morning around 3a.m., it begins. Churning. Spinning. Worrying thoughts. For the past few weeks, I have woken in the still-dark hours with my mind already on the hamster wheel, doing laps around so many things: my kids, my purpose, and most of all during this season, our future as a country. This year has done a number on my peace, and although I do a pretty good job staying on top of it during the day, at night, when the lights are off and my guard is down, all the worries come home to roost.

Recently, during one of these early morning battles, I began asking God for answers, but not answers to the issues I was worried about. Instead, I asked for answers to the problem of my thoughts themselves. How do I get peace in my mind even when there isn’t peace in my world? Is it even possible?

Though I didn’t have an angelic visitation or hear an audible voice, I did feel a distinct statement land right in the middle of all that turmoil:

“This will be the year of living loved.”

Something about those words brought an immediate sense of calm. I fumbled around in the dark for my cell phone and looked up the words to one of my favorite passages in the Bible:

Lord, You have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I stand up;
You understand my thoughts from far away.
You observe my travels and my rest;
You are aware of all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue,
You know all about it, Lord.
You have encircled me;
You have placed Your hand on me.
This extraordinary knowledge is beyond me.
It is lofty; I am unable to reach it. (Psalm 139:1-6 HCSB)

Waves of peace washed over me as I read David’s words. I’ve learned the value of meditation for capturing thoughts, so I decided to meditate on one tiny, powerful line from the passage, hoping to fall back to sleep. Over and over, I rolled these words around in my mind:

I am seen, known, and loved by God.

I am seen, known, and loved by God.

Slowly, steadily, the overwhelming beauty of that truth sank into my bones and mind. God’s presence filled all the angsty spaces in my soul, and I knew: I am not alone here. Not now, not ever. I am not in charge of fixing the world. I am not carrying these burdens alone. I am fully seen and fully loved. Nothing—not life or death or angels or demons or politics or pandemics—can take that from me. Amazingly, I drifted to sleep within a few minutes.

The next morning, I pulled out a fresh notebook (because anything is possible if you have a good pen and a brand-new notebook) and wrote my new and only resolution for the year ahead: I will live loved.

That’s it. That’s my only goal for 2021. It would be cool to lose weight or save a bunch of money or write another book, but those are not going to be my primary focus. Instead, I want to lean into the love of God and learn what it truly means to live inside it. I want to begin to fully understand how his love tastes and smells and feels. I want to find out how living loved impacts my relationships with my family and my world. I want to end the year fully believing that the love of God is always mine and always the answer. I want to wrap myself up in this one absolute until it becomes a part of all my thoughts and my words and my actions.

We are living at a tumultuous point on the timeline of human history, yes, but we are loved by the God who does not, does not, does not change. We can plant our flag in this good ground: we are and will always be loved. That’s a great reason to face the new year with hope.

Bo Stern-Brady is an author, pastor and co-founder of Soulspace, an app that helps anchor runaway thoughts to the love of God. She has written three books including Beautiful Battlefields, the story of her husband’s battle with ALS and the beauty that can be found in the fiercest fights. Bo married the second love of her life in 2019 and they split their time between Bend and Portland, Oregon. For more information on the Soulspace meditation app go to soulspace.co.

Photograph © Bart LaRue, used with permission