My 2021 Theme + Vision Board

This week was my first week of teaching for our second semester, + I wanted to kick off the year in a memorable way for my students.

I was watching a video from lifestyle designer Lavendaire (I love the beautiful way she has created her life + subscribe to all of her content) where she decides on a theme for the year + then creates a vision board based on that theme.

One of my friends had also shown me her vision board project a while back and I loved the idea of it, so I knew this would be the perfect creative + purposeful project for my students, + myself.

In order to create my vision board, I needed a theme. Based on my prayer time lately, I knew my theme for this year had to be something related to waiting on God. During the portion of my prayer time when I spend time meditating + asking God questions, I have been searching the scriptures for wisdom on patience. I found several great passages, but one verse from scripture seemed to fit my situation perfectly:

"Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him" (KJV)

This verse is from Psalm 37:7 (ESV says, "Be still before the Lord," which I also like). Psalm 37, according to my literary study Bible, is a wisdom psalm. This psalm consists of "a collection of proverbs, an effect reinforced by the large number of commands in the psalm. The implied situation is that of the lament psalms--the righteous being afflicted by the wicked. Verses 3-7 specifically are "commands regarding how to relate to God in trying situations."

Knowing how to relate to God in trying situations is exactly what I need right now.

We can all relate to the struggle of waiting.

We've been waiting for life to go back to normal for almost a year now. For myself specifically--I've been waiting to go back to the Philippines, waiting to see my boyfriend again, waiting for my mental state to heal.

I feel like waiting is all I'm doing + I'm not doing it very well.

But this verse presents the image of resting in the Lord-- I love that image.

Resting in the Lord is when His perfect peace will surround you. We need His perfect peace now more than ever.

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Once I picked my theme for the year, I began searching for photos that represented that theme.

My favorite place to search for photos + inspiration is Pinterest. The photos you can find there are true works of art, + I have boards full of inspiration that I've found over the years.

After I found all of my photos I wanted to include in my collage + saved them to my desktop, I headed to the site that would help me make the beautiful collage I had envisioned.

The site is called Moodzer, you can make an account + create a collage for free (there is also a version where you have to pay). I learned about this site from Lavendaire's video and I love it! It's so user-friendly.

After you create an account, the site will immediately ask you to upload your images + it will put them all in a collage for you! From there you can edit the collage by moving photos around, changing their sizes, adjusting the space in-between photos, + changing the collage background.

I put my 2021 theme, Psalm 37:7, in the middle of the collage and then built everything else around it. I played around with the photos for quite a while until I felt like each one was in its proper place + then I hit the export button + downloaded my finished vision board.

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The final step in my vision board project was making my board visible in my daily life--there is no point of creating this board + a theme for the year if I'm never going to look at it again!

One simple step I took to make my board visible was to set it as my desktop background. Now, each work day I log on to my laptop + see Psalm 37:7 + remember to "rest in the Lord & wait patiently for Him."

Finally, I decided to recreate my collage on a larger-scale + hang it up in my room.

To do this, I first had to print out all of the photos from the collage in color + then cut them out.

Then, while looking at my original collage from Moodzer on my desktop as a guide, I recreated the collage by arranging the photos in a similar patten on my wall.

I'm looking forward to other ways that I can continue to include this verse in my daily life this year to be constantly meditating on the fact that I need to "rest in the Lord & wait patiently for Him."

What is your theme for 2021?

I'd love to hear about it in the comments below :)

Peace,