About two months ago, before a worship night at our church I was asking God to give me a word for the night.  It was the first worship night of the year and we had just finished up a week of prayer and fasting.

Choosing a word for the year was a trend I had been seeing all over social media and in talking with friends.  Interestingly enough, I hadn’t really landed on a word for myself for 2019 yet.  Going into this worship night I was really hoping to bring a word for everyone else not considering that God may want to get a bit more personal with me LOL!

Clicking Refresh

The word I kept getting was “Refresh” in the sense of what you do to a computer screen when its stuck.  I’m sure everyone has been on a website that gets slow or stuck and you need to click the refresh button to get things moving again.

Refresh: To update something with new data.  Also called ‘reload’.  To recharge with power or information

I wanted to unpack and understand exactly what happens when a computer “refreshes or reloads” so that I could really understand what I felt God was telling me in this moment.  I decided to call a friend of mine who is a computer tech.  What I wanted was for him to explain to me what it means to click refresh on a computer.  He responded with this:

Refreshing:  Its like reloading or starting over in the part you’re in.  Because the “page” you’re on is stuck or frozen.  Or, your “page” hasn’t fully loaded.  It hasn’t completed the way you expected it to.  You need to refresh to bring it back to the “Full screen”

When I heard this description of the word, it was like all the lights went on in my head.  I knew exactly what God was trying to say (to everyone else) for this season.  That night at our worship night, I brought the word.  I spoke it with confidence and excitement relating to it personally but in that moment feeling like it was for everyone else more than for myself.

A Season of Rest

Fast forward 2 months from that worship night and I’ve just stepped into something that I’ve been fighting against for probably the better part of a year.  I’m taking some time away from leadership at our church and entering a time of rest, refocus and you guessed it, a “refresh”.

Its funny, last year I started reading the book “Present over Perfect” . I recall getting about two chapters in and thinking to myself that its was a very similar story to mine except the part where she stepped down from some things and started saying “no” to the extras.  At the time, I was no where near ready to slow down.  I was a high functioning multi tasker who was determined to do “all the things” and do them well!  Yikes! even typing that out right now seems a bit ridiculous.

Now that I’ve made the decision and faced the conversations that had to happen, I’m realizing that it is definitely the right thing for me, for my family, and for my marriage.  Its hard, and its scary, and sad to step down but I know God is going to walk me through it.

If I’m honest, I know that my high functioning multi tasking ways had reached a point where I was left doing lots of great things but not doing any of them super well.

I’m just at the beginning of this new season so I’m really not sure where or what or which way or anything really.  I just know that its time to take a few deep breaths, and “REFRESH”.

Someone asked me whether I’ll also be taking a break from blogging.  I’ve wondered that myself as well.  You know, I might actually blog more.  This might be the best way for me to process this season as I unpack it all.  I guess we shall see.  Like I said, there is a lot I don’t know right now.  Thats kinda tricky for someone who’s used to solving the world LOL.