As we enter a new year, most of us find ourselves in the same place – between a finish line and a starting line. What do we want to change? Where do we want to go? What do we need from our people, from ourselves, and from the Lord?

We’re starting 2022 with best-selling author and speaker, Rebekah Lyons, who encourages us all to “take inventory,” which, if you’re anything like me sounds like a nightmare of numbers, color-coordinating pantries, and realizing you may be more of a hoarder than you let yourself believe. But in her book, Rhythms of Renewal: Trading Stress and Anxiety for a Life of Peace and Purpose, Rebekah distills this idea of spiritual and relational reflection into four simple questions we can consider to better start this new year with transparency, peace, and renewal. She simply asks herself and asks the Lord to direct her in:

What’s right? What’s wrong? What’s confused? And what’s missing?

While seemingly daunting at first with a potential for skeletons to surface that we may not want to face, these simple questions are how we stop racing through life and start living into God’s best for us! “I don’t want to always have my head so down that I don’t see the bigger picture of what God is doing,” Rebekah says. Maybe taking inventory is just the place to start?

But how do we do this if we’re not big journalers or if time feels so limited for things like reflection and prayer? Check out just a few of the practical ways she offers.

Get quiet & do the heart work

“So often we don’t know where we are and how we are because we will not give ourselves permission to stop long enough and ask. We’re afraid of what will come out.”

Tech detox

“I wasn’t being true to my voice. I started writing and posting [on Instagram] what others wanted to hear, not what I wanted to say. [I started] running out of original thoughts because [I was] consuming everyone else’s.”

Trial and grief as a birthplace of fruit

“The fullness of joy depends on the fullness of healing. And the fullness of healing depends on knowing what needs to be healed.”

The heart of the matter is, we all crave, need, and are made for restful and renewing relationships with the Lord and with others. And we know how much courage it takes to prioritize and pursue that in our busy day-to-day lives! Rebekah defines bravery as “moving scared.” And sometimes that’s exactly what committing to rest feels like. Making a healthy move that’s scary; fearful of missing out, getting behind, or benching ourselves from all that’s before us.

It’s brave because it’s hard. It’s brave because it’s counterculture. It’s brave because it reminds us that we don’t have it all together, that sometimes we have to fall apart, and that we’re ultimately made for a place where eternal rest will be found.

“Rest reminds us that we will never arrive [on this earth]. It gives us permission to stop and remember life isn’t about getting to the next thing, it’s about obedience and faith growing in this next [year] more than it did in the last.”

So let’s just take a little inventory, shall we? Let the Lord show us what’s right, wrong, confused, and missing and soak up the delicious truth that He will carry us through those things in the now and will make perfect all those things in the end.

Happy New Year, everyone!