A word for the year. That is so my speed. I read it somewhere (there are so many smart people on the internet). Instead of a long list of resolutions at year's start, select just one word. A word that represents what you will strive for, search for, attempt to infuse into your life over the coming 365 days. I'm easily carried away with grandiose goals, resolutions and lists of things to do, things to be done. Which isn't bad in itself, but there is so much I want to do, see, accomplish, become. Overwhelming, that's what all that mess is. And so the idea of a word soothes me and appeals to me at the most basic level of my heart.
In 2010, the word was Gratitude. I posted a whiteboard on the refrigerator and vowed to find one thing every day for which I could be grateful. Sometimes I was grateful for the most simple of things: Hot coffee with cream. A warm bed. A clean kitchen. The abundance of tap water. Sometimes my gratitude went deeper: Healthy children. Knowing my grandparents. Our jobs. Sometimes, without my prompting, the children would express their thankfulness on the board: Mommy and Daddy. Our house. My cat.
I skipped a couple of years. Worries were rather abundant at that time, as I recall. Maslow's pyramid kicked in perhaps? But as we began to emerge from the Anxious Time, I selected a new word for 2013: Joy. Joy is an interesting word. Different from happiness with its pesky dependence upon circumstances. Joy is something you have in spite of circumstances. How in the world can I get me some of that? After a couple of years of head-down, survival-mode seriousness, I wanted to know. Needed to know. Strangely, I could feel it coming. It was coming because the Lord was teaching me that to experience Joy, I had to divorce my heart from Circumstances. In other words, I had to let go of everything to get the one thing that I really wanted. I had to redefine Security. That darn Security was elusive! It was not in any bank. I couldn't find it inside the walls of my pretty house, on the beautiful street on which we live or in the faces of my beloved neighbors. I couldn't even find it in any earthly relationship, no matter how lovely and wonderful that relationship was. My Security was someplace else altogether, and when I finally found it...well, what do you know? There was Joy as well.
This year my word is an exciting one. I came to it the first day I opened the Word in 2014. January 6. "I am able to do far beyond all that you ask or imagine." Or as it appears in Ephesians 3:20: "Now glory be to God who by his mighty power at work within us is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask or even Dream of -- infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts or hopes." Wow, now there's a promise! A great word to start the year. It's got it all: hope, excitement, energy, promise, courage and boldness.
I'm looking forward to see what Dreams He has for us in 2014.