Happy New Year: 2025, Be’ing, favorite reads, and other thoughts...
January is here. Happy New Year, and I am back with some random thoughts, ideas, insights and things that keep me curious.
Happy New Year! I can’t believe it has been 25 years since Y2K… some of you might not even know what that means. All good, it didn’t live up to the hype.
As a family, we had a fantastic Christmas. Robin and I flew down to Florida and attended Life.Church Wellington and West Palm Beach Christmas services. Then, Reia flew into Orlando (on her 23rd birthday), and we spent Christmas and a few days with Reese, who is currently in the Disney College Program. Five parks in two days—come on!
What a special time it was. By next Christmas Reia will be married and in Med School, so we knew we needed to seize this opportunity. Seasons change and this one has been pretty great, and I know the next chapter with Riley as a son-in-law will be different, but I also believe it will be pretty awesome.
A fourteen year tradition of spending New Year’s Eve with some of our best friends continued! Brian and Maureen moved to Portland a few years ago, and we did miss the first year they moved. However, last year Robin and I flew to Portland and continued the tradition; this year we flew into Las Vegas and spent the day with them. They currently have a foster baby and couldn’t get away overnight, so we opted to meet in Vegas, have coffee, lunch and just spend some long overdue time together even though it was short. Friendship is so important, and even though we are thousands of miles and don’t connect like we used too, we instantly caught back up like the good ol’ days.
Over the last 16 years, I have been following Chris Brogan’s concept of having a “Word of the Year.” Many have adopted, modified, and enhanced this idea, but generally speaking, it has been a great exercise in seeking clarity and direction from God in areas He is pressing into my spirit. This has also been a part of NYE discussions with the Russells. We had a great discussion over lunch about our 2024 and 2025 words.
This year’s word came to me quickly and early. In mid-December, I was journaling when a few thoughts dropped into my mind. After just a few minutes of processing and writing, the word Occupy became abundantly clear as my word.
Dave Adamson, in his book 52 Hebrew Words Every Christian Should Know, writes about the Hebrew word anavah. We often translate anavah as “humility,” but its literal definition is to occupy your God-given space in the world—to neither overestimate yourself and your abilities nor underestimate them. For a lot of reasons, I feel like I haven’t been fully occupying my God-given space. In some areas, I believe my God-given abilities have grown, changed, and developed, requiring me to make adjustments to fully leverage and steward them well.
Here are a few key closing thoughts on Occupy:
Self-Awareness: Recognize your God-given identity and strengths. They change over time and through seasons.
Stay Centered: Don’t overstep, but don’t retreat either. Don’t bury the talents or over use them.
Lead in Every Moment: Occupy each moment fully. Often, the smallest moments are the most significant. Have eyes to see, and compassion to respond and “be.”
Make Room: Create intentional space for others to step in, step up, and occupy their space. Remember, the fruit of your leadership grows on others' trees.
Update: On our flight to Vegas, I started to read one of my “annual reads” for the year, Falling Upward. As I made it through the introduction and taking copious notes, underlining, and plenty of asterisks, something really pressed into my spirit. As a second-half-of-life person, living in a first-half-of-life culture, I must stay true and embrace the second half. Occupy feels like a first-half word, but the word “Be” is what I am after. Me, my true self, who God created me to be and continues to refine, shape, and break must continue to be self-aware, centered, lead in each moment, and make room! 2025 will be a year of Be’ing me.
Favorite reads of 2024 (not in order)
Annual must reads:
Things I am excited about in 2025
Reia getting married 💍
Alaskan Cruise 🛳️
Full year of tennis with no injuries 🙏
Stamping my 2025 Bingo card 😎
Celebrating YouVersion reaching 1 Billion Installs 🌍
Let’s make this a great year by staying curious, opting for experiences over things, and fully stewarding, and resting in our God given callings. I’m excited to share my journey, and hear from you as well.
Terry
Hey Sam! Good question. Falling Upward is a great book to really unpack it. Here is a promoted and summarized ChatGPT response. 😁
The first half of life is about building identity, security, and achieving external success—focused on structure, goals, and societal validation. It’s like constructing a house. In contrast, the second half of life shifts to inner growth, meaning, and wisdom—living fully within the “house” by embracing vulnerability, relationships, and spiritual depth.
Jung describes this as individuation, integrating all parts of the self, while Rohr frames it spiritually, moving from rules and success to deeper faith and purpose. American culture often overemphasizes the first half, making the transition to the second half challenging but essential for a fulfilled life.
Hope this helps. The key “culture” I am referring too is the western developed world- Merka 😉
Thank you for sharing, Terry! My wife and I are in our fourth year of choosing a word of the year, and it’s been such a meaningful way to focus our intentions. For 2025, my word is Overflow—a reminder to live out of abundance, pouring into others with generosity and gratitude, building on last year’s word, Hospitality.
Praying for your leadership as you step into a year of Be’ing. Here’s to fully embracing who God has called us to be in 2025!