Somehow this past year turned into me wanting to know what the heart is really about. I didn’t realize I was in this quest until I sat down to write this reflection truthfully. I started the year with the word “deeper” as my focus as I truly wanted to grow in depth with people around me. I wanted to discover more about them, who they are, and how I can truly enjoy living out love with them.
There was beauty in how I lived in the first third of the year. I found this beauty in who I saw people to truly be instead of the place they were. The part that truly upset me was I saw mutual love couldn’t be fully expressed because of the places I found us in. Either I was in a setting where love could not be expressed how I longed for it to be or there were moments when I could that seemed to pass too quickly to have these loving roots truly lead to a deeper relationship.
There were moments of depth and love but there still seemed to be preventatives leading into what I believe we are here for. So I changed my word to “takeover”. It was my childlike desire to say that if the world doesn’t let me find the depth I’m looking for then shucks, well why don’t we just change the world. The first month of my word change led to liberation and freedom I had yet to experience. I saw people transform and begin to have urgency to find what it meant to be free. I found that freedom comes from within somehow and then the exterior restrictions bottle that internal freedom from being expressed. At least that is what I experienced personally and encountered with those around me.
As I continued to watch people in the world around me change for the better, the more I started to encounter opposition. I truly saw how genuine people were afraid of the beautiful changes that were happening around me. I saw several people become something other than who they truly are. I didn’t see them as the problem, I saw their fear as the problem and that the people were actually the solution, they just didn’t realize it yet. However, the backlash continued to come. So I changed my word again.
Being indestructible is knowing that apparent defeat doesn’t mean defeat. I changed my word to “indestructible” because I knew in my inner depths that I could not be ultimately defeated because of the cross. I doubted salvation many instances because of external pressure yet what I discovered was that in my heart I still believed and was still at peace. There was a moment when there was someone who told me I wouldn’t make it to 2025. There was a vision I had that told me I wouldn’t make it either. Well, spoiler alert, I have made it to 2025 which literally proved that not all people tell the truth and not all visions come from a valid source.
I didn’t last long focusing on the word “indestructible” though because I didn’t see it as very humble, so I went back to the basics. I came back to the word “deeper” in the final month or two because I wanted to really see what could happen. I stopped focusing on finding depth with others though, I didn’t want to seem judgmental. So I focused on myself, to really search myself. I found that there was beauty internally despite external pressures. Pretty much all the darkness I faced came from external sources while what I saw from within was me longing to be known, loved, and cherished. I began to recognize how me believing from within my heart led me to producing beneficial encounters despite the darkness around me. It was kind of like I was a good tree producing good fruit in an orchard where other good trees required some searching to find. This search led me to producing a series of focal points in the final week of 2024, which I attached in the photo below.
When I made it to 2025, saw what I overcame, and reflected on what I came through, I began to see it through the lens of a song I wrote called “Waterfall”. I’m actually not a huge fan of the song haha, but it basically talks about facing something that has beauty and awe yet also demands your respect. That was kind of my year. There was much hardship, but I began to see the beauty in the journey of the discovery of myself and those around me. The world around me may have presented to me a desert. But in the middle of the desert, I found myself and many around me to be the oasis.
On New Year’s Eve the phrase that came to me was “You are a stronghold, a fortress, a refuge.” I was honored. I long to be someone who people can come to to find peace, love, joy and a reason to find beauty in life. Yet I wanted to search for a word that made me truly find the beauty. The word that came to me was “oasis”. It came from the song “Waterfall” I wrote. The oasis being the beauty you find once you have overcome the waterfall.
My vision for 2025 is to truly enjoy the oasis and expand the oasis to as many people who are seeking their refuge as possible until the desert turns into a massive, thriving ecosystem.
Jake Wentworth 