Abide.

A word for 2025

Word for the Year for 2025: Abide

Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash

Brandon and I talked about our word for the year yesterday morning, and all day I chewed on two—abide and shift. By the evening, abide seemed to be the word that was winning the day, but because I had a headache and no plans to reflect in writing until today anyway, I decided to sleep on it.

Today’s Bible verse in the Bible app is John 15:4-5, which in the NRSV begins “Abide with me.”

Here’s your sign.

Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash

“Abide” is a verb with three dictionary meanings and one archaic meaning, which I’m rather certain is the one Jesus intended in his vine and branches message there in the book of John. But the first three seem applicable for this season of my life.

The first definition of abide is about obedience.

I’m going to abide by these rules, this decision, this recommendation. I’m going to keep to or hold to or observe or follow.

When I think about 2025 and another year of lists, goals, and resolutions, the desire to shoot for more, to work harder, to achieve greater, to go deeper, etc. just sounds like a lot of work no one is actually calling me to do. God seems to be saying instead, Hold onto me. Observe my ways. Keep to The Way. Trust and obey.

I spent last year reading through about a dozen church mothers and fathers, people who are known as mystics for their ability to communicate about their experience of God. I’d like to continue on that way, looking for and seeing God’s presence in everything. I love the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and I’d like to not depart from it in 2025.

The second definition of abide is about tolerance.

Usually it’s turned into a negative—I cannot abide his disrespect, for instance. Abide can mean to tolerate or bear or endure or suffer or accept.

Last year I knew that we were entering a new season of our lives. I knew it would be different, but I didn’t know exactly how, or how I would react to the difference. I’ve always felt ready and excited for the next season of our family’s life. Rarely have I grieved the passing of an age.

But this Christmas, despite the joy and peace and love I felt throughout the month of December, I felt sad and a shade disappointed. My children are growing up, and many of the rituals and traditions we’ve held for years were no longer important to them. I made my usual advent activity calendar, the one I’ve been making for over a decade of their lives, the one that has evolved with their capabilities and interests, and of the 24 planned activities, we maybe did five or six as a family. Maybe. Even all the way to the last days of advent, I held onto hope, shoving Muppet Christmas Carol and White Christmas to the very last minutes of Christmas Eve, but our children were not interested.

I could resist this transition. I could strong-arm them into doing the things we’ve always done together. I could make them feel guilty. I could complain. But the truth is that our daughter is a college student, our middle son is going to be 18 in August of this year, and our youngest is a teenager, tangled up in hormones and storm chaser games (I have the weirdest and most wonderful children).

I am keenly aware that we are at the beginning of the end of a very long season of our family’s life, and I want to end it well.

Since before we were married, Brandon and I talked about wanting to have a family. Much of my emotions and attention in those first few years were spent on hoping for babies and grieving miscarriages, waiting for pregnancy tests to register, and then waiting for our first healthy baby to arrive. The last 18 years have been filled with abundance and joy. Raising a family has been one of the greatest gifts of my life. It has overflowed with grace. This season of our lives together has changed us and shaped us into very different people than we were when we said “I do.”

Even as we have worked together to strengthen our marriage this last decade especially, and maintained our own individual hobbies and friendships, there’s no denying that our children’s lives have defined the last 21 years of our lives. In the same way our family evolved slowly, changing imperceptibly day by day leading to this moment, our family will continue to evolve. Some family traditions will fade. Many of our moments are already divided and most are just Brandon and me, Brandon and me, learning how to be just Brandon and me.

In many ways, I want to resist this season of change because I have loved these years so much and I want to hold onto them longer, but to hold onto them would be to squeeze too hard, to strangle and drown their growth, to clip their wings, to turn my love for them into a bitter, needy creature they feel bad about leaving. I want them to feel as free as I felt as a young adult, not tethered to my heart but forever welcome home to it. The truth is that, try as I might, I can’t remember Christmases at my parents’ house between 18 and 23. I know they happened, but my mind’s folds hold instead all of the new places and faces of those years, and rightly so. It is the season of leaving. The season of coming into your own.

To abide this season is to accept it, tolerate it, bear it, endure it, and yes, even, to suffer it. It turns out I am going to grieve this particular ending, probably a lot, probably for a while. I’m going to weep in sorrow and weep in joy, at all that was and all that is and all that is to come.

The third definition of abide is about lasting.

Abide can also mean something that continues without fading or being lost. So much will remain, survive, and last beyond these years, too. I’ve spent a lot of time this last year writing about mid-life turning and what it has been like to navigate this road of teen years and marriage and career and faith.

Whether you’ve written about your kids’ lives or documented them in photos and video clips, as their parents, we are the treasure chest of their childhood memories. We hold onto the moments and experiences that shaped them, their ways of learning language, their passions, their earliest interests. We’ve had a front seat to the potter’s table where each mound of clay has been formed over the days and seasons.

We keep these treasures with us. They abide.

The fourth, archaic definition of abide is to dwell.

Of course I have lists and goals and dreams for 2025, but my greatest hope is to continue to practice the presence of God, no matter what transpires, accepting and celebrating the wonder and joy of existence wave on wave.

This is what I believe it means to abide with Jesus, to dwell in him, to live and move and have our being in him. He’s already the Source of all that is, the One who holds all things together, so maybe it seems obvious that we live in Christ.

But there are plenty of people who dwell in places that are not home. I want to live in Christ, to be alive in Christ, to find my home in Christ. So in this way, I think 2025 is about continuing to abide with Christ, to continue the practices that reveal to me the presence of God in my daily life so that I can continue to experience the abundant life he promised.

So, abide it is.

The Year-End Wrap-Up

This is one of my favorite practices each year, to look back and see where we’ve been and to look forward to what may come. I’m often knocked over by all that has taken place in our lives in the last 365 days.

To see what books, music, documentaries, and events I loved most and what resolutions I missed or hit, hop on over to my website.