My Word is Olaf

I've been seeing this everywhere this week, with the close of 2014 upon us. Choosing a word, one word for the upcoming year. I've never been super into New Year's. A day is very like the one before it and the one that will come after, to a mom. But this year we, as a family, face great change. So, I am embracing the sentimental. The idea of one word, is to find a word that will bring healing, encouragement, strength, or hope into your life... to harness the power of the tangible. To focus your energies into one goal. I find it a difficult task to choose one word, from the great number of words in the English language, to summarize my hopes, aspirations, and areas that need focused energy. Because no one meaning would do such a herculean task, I found an image, an idea, that would be my tangible word, my stone to hold in my hand and remind me of my goals — and the word I settled on, is Olaf.

When conjuring an image of what I want for my family, Olaf is a natural choice. He is in many ways the perfect choice, partly because his name will be constantly in front of me, a reminder every single time my children watch, play, or sing about Frozen. He is the embodiment of optimism and hope and "all good things, all good things." He is sunshine and warmth and happiness — and those are the things my family needs this year. But there is a deeper reason for my choice. There is something I need this year.

When Anna and Olaf arrive at Elsa's solitary ice palace to convince her to return home, Anna is making her case and Elsa is calmly telling her, "No, you must leave," when Olaf walks up and introduces himself. Elsa looks at him, completely shocked. She says, "I made you? And you're alive?" She is absolutely dumbfounded that she created something, and you see a bit of a nostalgic smile as she sees the results of her power, used well. She sees his sweet personality, the friendship he has with her sister... she sees the good she made, and for just a second she hopes, she remembers the beautiful relationship she had with her sister, the happiness of youth and the bonds of love... Then just as quickly she remembers the injury she dealt, and immediately her guard goes back up. It takes one second of fear to make her back down from pursuing the good things her power can do, and just moments later (after some serious harmonizing) she deals a greater injury to her sister, and creates a giant snow monster, completely from a place of fear.

So, what I need is to remember that the Lord has given me gifts and strengths, and while those are also, very frequently my weaknesses, he intended me to use them to create, to grow, to strengthen. In my massive fear of failure, I have squashed the desire to step out on a limb, or to engage with my life, because I have been afraid that I would mess things up with my crazy ideas or my passionate expression. I have run from my gifts, my strengths, my powers, forgetting that when I trust God, when I embrace a spirit of power, love, self control... then I can do good things and he can do GREAT things. And if I will not do those things, if I run in fear, I will only make it worse, abandoning those who need me and running from responsibility.

So let 2015 be the year of embracing my strengths, my passions, my gifts. Let these things overflow from a heart of love, filling my family's lives with warmth, and sunshine, and summer. Let me embrace my Olaf, the good thing that I can make. I want to build a snowman, because it's 2015, and I like warm hugs.