One Word for the Year

How I Choose My “Word” for the Year

Earlier this week I shared my reflection on my word for 2022: believe.

As we move into 2023, as we get back into our routines (or perhaps start new ones), we are all given the opportunity to find a new word—or perhaps our first word. To find the word we can cling to over the next 360ish days. The word that holds special meaning for this particular year.

But how do we choose it? How do we know which word is *our* word?

For me personally, I don’t choose it. I’ve always felt as though the word has been given to me.

Usually, at the end of the year I will start asking the question, what is my word?

I will write that question down. I will pray on it. I will think about it constantly.

What is my word? Show me my word. Make it stand out.

I have never been someone who hears the word given to me. Throughout my life of faith, I’ve never had that moment of physically hearing God’s voice. I like to think it’s because He knows I’d probably be spooked. I’d probably jump and think someone was behind me. I’d probably lean into all of the true crime podcasts I’ve listened to and think his voice was actually that of a serial killer hiding in my closet.

So at this point, I’m cool with the silence. I’m cool with the inaudible nudges. They work for me.

This year, I again wrote out the question: What is my word? Will you show it to me? Will you make it stand out?

A few days later, I got the weekly bulletin from my church in my email. At the top, there was a Bible verse.

As you can see, the word “peace” is bolded and italicized.

It stands out.

When I read the verse, I felt my stomach flip over. It was that feeling of “this might be it!!”

But I didn’t want to jump to conclusions. I wanted to be sure.

If that is my word, I prayed, really drive it home.

Earlier in the day, I’d posted a video on Instagram, and searched around for a song to go in the background. When I reopened the app, my search results were still in my history. One of the songs I searched for? Peace by Taylor Swift.

That night, I went over to my parents’ house. We had dinner with my aunt, uncle and grandpa. At one point, I walked down the hall to use the bathroom. There was a candle burning and I loved the way it smelled, so I bent down to see the name of it.

Peace.

At church that weekend, a woman came up and wished me a happy new year. I wished her the same.

“Aren’t we lucky,” she said, “that we have a God that can give us such peace?”

Goosebumps ran down my arms.

Clearly, I’d found my word.

Now, it’s in my nature to fear every single word I get. In these first weeks, I’m always trying to figure out why this is my word. And I tend to catastrophize.

PEACE? WHY DO I NEED PEACE? AM I NOT PEACEFUL? I AM THE DEFINITION OF PEACE.

WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN THAT REQUIRES ME TO NEED PEACE?

WHY IS THIS THE SCARIEST WORD OF ALL TIME?

I like to think I give God a good laugh every year.

I am determinedly doubtful and afraid. Consistently curious—are you sure? Or stubborn—does it HAVE to be that word?

But I have seen time and time again that my word is the right word. It is the word I need most. It is the word that will guide me through the trials and tribulations of the year to come.

And this year, it would appear that my word is peace.

Merriam Webster defines peace as:

– a state of tranquility or quiet

– freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts or emotions

– harmony in personal relations

Which, honestly, sounds wonderful.

So even though I am the slightest bit afraid and suspicious of this word (as always), I am trying to center myself in it right from the jump.

Peace is a lovely word. Peace is a lovely thing.

If peace is what 2023 has in store for me, I consider myself to be very lucky.

Bring on the peace. I want it! I need it! I love it!

Are you hoping for a word this year?

Or do you perhaps have one already?

I’d love to hear!

The Year of “Believe”

Typically, I can remember when I was given my word for the year. I can remember that moment of that’s it! So I keep that memory close, and then at the end of the year, knowing all that I didn’t know before, I like to reflect on it. I like to think back to when I wondered why is this my word? And why can’t it be Hawaii? Or jackpot?

This year however, I have only remembered one thing on repeat.

It was in January, and my sister and I were sitting at our kitchen table. She shared her word with me and I shared mine.

“Believe,” I said.

But instead of just leaving it there, I followed it up with THIS:

“It’s kind of a beginner word.”

This has absolutely haunted me ever since.

Especially because, shortly after telling her this, and thus starting my “year of believe”, my “year of a very beginner word” our apartment flooded. And that kicked off a series of chaotic events that left me hanging on for dear life.

I’d initially viewed “believe” as just a word that meant I believe in God.

It was a beginner word because—I thought—it was a basic concept. It was a yes or no question. Do you believe? Yes. Okay, I guess I’ll see you in 2023 for a new word.

But as I began to walk into this year, into the real heart of it, I realized that do you believe? is not a one-time question. And it’s not a choice you make once. It is not the same as asking someone, do you like mushrooms? Believing is an ongoing question, an ongoing experience, an ongoing answer.

And to say, yes, I believe is not a catch all answer of faith.

It is used many different ways, and thus is can mean many different things.

In the song “I’m Not Alone” by Riley Clemmons, she says, “help me believe what is true,” and in her song “For the Good” she says, “I know you’re working; I believe!”

Already this is two different versions of the word believe. Help me believe what is true asks for help in casting out the lies we are hit with every single day. The lies that say, “you are not enough” “you are unlovable” “you don’t deserve good things.” And on dark days, when we are especially vulnerable to those lies, it takes a lot of courage not to believe them.

I know you’re working; I believe is a proclamation that you believe God is working behind the scenes. That even when you can’t see the plans He has for you, you believe they are good. Even when it feels like you are stuck or lonely or abandoned, He is working. It means that you believe you are living a purposeful life, even when you don’t know what that purpose is yet.

In “Famous For” by Tauren Wells, he says, “there is no fear ‘cause I believe”

In times of chaos, grief, or unknown, it is very common to feel scared. Heck, I feel scared in good times, too. I always like to know what’s happening or what’s about to happen. I like to feel like I’m in control, or like I can escape—like I can change the ending if it’s not going to turn out like I wanted. But to say, “I have no fear, because I believe” means that even if the ending is nothing like you expected—even if the middle or beginning is nothing like you expected—even if you have no idea where you are or where you’re going or what you’re doing, you know God is in control. That there’s no reason to be afraid.

There are so many elements of “believing.”

And the more I found, the more I realized that it is THE FARTHEST thing from a “beginner” word.

Because I realized that no, I don’t believe all these things. Not all the time. Sometimes I believe in the opinions of the world over the opinions of God. Sometimes I believe my life is off track or “wrong” or unsuccessful, rather than believing in the plans and pace God has given me. Sometimes I believe that God has left me behind, that I need to give into the fear, that I need to “take the wheel” rather than trust He has it under control.

Over the course of this year, there were many moments I wanted to stomp my foot and say, “this isn’t it! This isn’t what I wanted. This is, perhaps, what I feared most. Why? WHY?”

And through every trial, through every season of doubt, panic, and smog, I just kept hearing that word: believe.

Believe that this is all part of a plan.

Believe that you are in good hands.

Believe even though you can’t see, understand, or predict what’s going to happen next.

Believe.

This word, this lesson I learned, will serve me well going forward. For I have not been give assurance that I will never struggle or doubt or feel like my world is spinning out of control. I have not been given the secret to never being afraid or to get whatever I want. But I have been given a word that reminds me what to do when I do feel afraid, when I am doubtful, when I feel like everything is upside down.

I can choose to believe. I can make that choice over and over.

You can check out my previous words here: Give – Patience – Surrender – Shine – Faith – Start

The Year of “Start”

I know I wasn’t alone last January when the clock struck midnight and I sat there thinking, what could possibly follow 2020?

I was feeling let down by the happenings of the last year, especially since the foreseeable future seemed to hold much of the same. And yet, the word I felt stirring in my heart, the word that would be the defining word of my year, the word I believed God was showing me, to guide me through the twists and turns of 2021, was…start.

Start.

Defined by the Merriam Webster dictionary as:

To move suddenly

To come into being, activity or operation

To begin a course or journey

To do or experience the first stages or actions of

To start is all about beginning. It’s all about moving from a still place to an active place. It’s about newness.

But I didn’t feel new. I was almost a year deep into a global pandemic, I had just recently turned 30, I’d been working the same job for over a decade, and my sister and I had been living in the same condo for almost six years.

There wasn’t a lot of newness in sight, and with so many restrictions on what we could and couldn’t do, and who we could and couldn’t see, I didn’t see a lot of opportunities for newness up ahead.

I didn’t understand how this could possibly be my word.

But alas, as it always does, the word showed up in blazing colors. Saying, YES, I AM YOUR WORD. I DON’T CARE IF IT DOESN’T MAKE LOGICAL SENSE. I AM YOUR WORD, BABE.

And so, the year began.

Seemingly five minutes in, I was ready. Impatient even. Okay, I thought, START. Bring me all the good things. All the new things. All of the everything that I’ve been wanting. If this is the year of start, then start.

Funny how my go to reaction at the beginning of every year is to be selfish and impatient. I always try to mold my word into a kind of assurance that I will finally get what I want, even though those wants change and grow based on what I learned the previous year.

Still, right on schedule, I was greedy. So, right on schedule, I got the polite pat on the shoulder/slap across the face reminding me to RELAX.

This time, it came in the form of a blog post from a longtime favorite blogger of mine, Hannah Brencher. She wrote a post (which was an excerpt from her book Fighting Forward), which inspired me to then write this post about the idea of “slow magic.”

She wrote:

“I can tell you, the magic lives in the secret hours. In the time invested in a process rather than a finished product. The magic will find you there. And if you let it, it will transform you on deep levels.”

The magic lives in the process rather than the finished product.

It was January 4^th and God had already called me out. Trust the process. Be patient. Stop trying to find a finish line in January.

Part of me got goosebumps because I felt so seen and understood. Another part of me stomped my foot like a bratty teenager and was like, FINE.

I wrote “believe in the slow magic” everywhere, so I could always see it. It became a partner to my word and a mantra to keep me calm.

And then the beginnings started.

In January, I started taking a Creative Nonfiction writing class as part of my Creative Writing Capstone at UCLA Extension. Over the 10-week course, I wrote five pieces that dug deep into parts of myself that I’d never written about before. This then carried over into the Personal Essay class I took in the spring, where I wrote six more pieces, all of which I’d never dreamed of having the courage to write.

In February, I started a small, part time accounting job to help out a friend and make a little extra money—the small profit of which would come in clutch more than once throughout the year—and I signed up to become a Backyard Harvest Leader for Food Forward, which allowed me to safely volunteer amongst COVID restrictions.

In March, my sister Natalee and I started packing up our condo because our landlord informed us she was selling the property. We then spent hours on apartments.com trying to find a new place to live.

In April, we started the application process for an apartment that was not only in a great area but was affordable and had an incredibly kind landlord who we fell in love with instantly. We moved in on the 15^th.

In May, Natalee, my best friend Allison, and I took a mini trip to Ojai where we started talking. Not casually, not flippantly, but openly and intensely honestly. We showed up to the Topa Winery with the intention of drinking a little wine and getting a little tipsy, but we ended up spending five hours sharing our deepest fears, hopes, regrets and hurts, provoking a healing that none of us expected.

In June, I started online dating again. I’d had my sights set on someone for a long time and I worked up the courage to go for it, but I got rejected. So, after letting the sting simmer for a little while, I downloaded an app and put myself back out there.

In July, I started a big writing project with a couple from my church. I was asked to help tell their incredible story so that it could be shared with the world. It was the first time I’d ever written a story that wasn’t my own, and it tested me immensely, but it was also so incredibly rewarding that I cried when I finished.

In August, I started giving blood regularly! I’ve felt drawn to give blood for a number of years now, but have had a handful of struggles and scary experiences in the process. Still, after every mishap, it would only take a few weeks for me to hear that call again. So, after talking to my doctor and figuring out what the best way for me to give was, I donated in August both smoothly and easily—and it’s been that way ever since!

In September, I started an online bible study with Proverbs 31. It was the first time I’d ever done an online bible study, and the first time I’d done any kind of study outside of my church. It allowed me to connect with thousands of women around the world who made me feel more seen and understood than I ever had.

In October, my mom, sister and I started our “Epic October Trip” that would take us to four states across two weeks. It allowed us all to disconnect from the chaos of normal life and just exist in the day to day with each other.

In November, I started (and finished) the final chapter of the church writing project. After typing the final word, I sat, stunned. I couldn’t believe that I had actually finished, couldn’t believe I’d reached the top of what seemed like an un-climbable mountain. I didn’t know where it would go from there, who would read it, or if it would reach any farther than the population of my church, but I felt so incredibly purposeful in that moment, as if I’d used the gifts I’ve been given to make something very powerful—and then I cried.

In December, I started making plans for the new year. I set 17 new goals, I made plans for upcoming vacations, I opened my heart to trying new things and I promised to embrace whatever came my way.

Amongst all of my “starts” this year, it should be noted that I also learned to stop looking for the finish line. Sure, there are goals that I want to complete, lists I want to get through, and things I want to achieve and finish in my life. But for a long time I was looking for a kind of finish line that would promise no more pain, no more struggle, no more anxiety, no more low self-esteem or seasons when I feel lost, scared and lonely. I wanted there to be a way that I could finish everything hard in my life, so that I could finally relax into it. But there is really only one finish line. And while I don’t necessarily fear what’s on the other side of it, it is a final and lasting line.

Thus, if there are always lists, always goals, always things I can reach for, people I can meet, mountains I can climb, and wonder I can experience, I am on this side of the finish line. I am learning, I am growing, I am becoming more and more like the person I was made to be.

So while I can think of each day as another day closer to the finish, I can also think of each day as a new beginning. A new opportunity. A new journey. An exciting and inspiring, fresh start.

You can check out my previous words here: Give – Patience – Surrender – Shine – Faith

The Year of “Faith”

It is always an interesting experience to sit down and write about my word of the year, from the other side of the year. When I first learn my word, I’m excited, but often worried about what’s to come. And then in January of the following year, having lived through the ups and downs of both the year and the word, I often laugh at the naivety and anxiety, thinking to myself, you really had no idea what was ahead.

Needless to say, 2020 was unique in its ability to be unpredictable. For me, stepping into a new decade and the last year of my 20’s, I knew change was afoot. In fact, I felt like it had been closing in for quite some time. When I was given the word “faith”, I was confident that the year would be challenging, but I really had no idea of what sort.

Reading through my journal from the early months of last year, I can remember how restless I was. While I’d been anticipating the arrival of change, I was also impatient for it. There were parts of my life that I wanted to change, and I wrote about them in a demanding, desperate tone. I made empty promises to pray more and I set unfulfilled goals to spend more time with God—upset that neither were getting me where I wanted to go.

Then came March, where, on the 17^th, I wrote, “well, the world has gone f*cking crazy…”

A true statement that was really only half true at the time.

A few days later, I started an entry with, “I really put my quarantine time to good use today—what an insane thing to write.” And the entries that follow are feverish, nervous, and overly sarcastic, trying to find comfort amongst the ever-growing panic around me.

In April, while knee deep in a puzzle that barely fit on our coffee table, my sister and I sat down to watch I Still Believe, a movie based on the life of Christian singer Jeremy Camp. In the movie, (spoiler alert!) his wife dies of cancer, after having previously believed she was in remission. It is a very hard, but very inspiring story, and I thought about it for weeks afterward, but that night, I wrote this:

“One part of the movie that struck me and that makes me tear up just thinking about it is the very last scene, where they show his late wife’s journal. There is a bible verse she circled that says, ‘do not be afraid,’ and next to it she wrote, ‘I won’t be! I will only believe!’ I can’t imagine that faith.”

It is the first mention of my word up until that point. And I vividly remember writing it out, underlining it, and then immediately bursting into tears. It wasn’t until then that I realized how far my mind had wandered. And in a world that had begun to make me spiral with questions—most prominent of which was “what do I do now?!”—this movie was a reminder to lean into that word—to have faith.

Now, 2020 was no stranger to heartache. And oftentimes I caught myself wondering and asking why? Why was this happening? A pandemic was running rampant, people were losing their jobs, their homes, and their loved ones. And in my own life, a string of medical scares had left my family feeling exhausted and terrified. Pain and chaos were coming in all directions and I was not only asking why but how? How I am I supposed to have faith when so much bad is happening around me? How can I encourage faith in others when I have no explanation for what is happening? How can I pray when I don’t feel like it will make a difference?

It was a constant struggle, a constant point of contention between God and I. And I fought my word hard.

But then I would always come back to that movie.

To that little entry Jeremy Camp’s late wife, Melissa, wrote in her journal. I couldn’t stop thinking about how much it meant to me. Someone she never met, never heard of, never knew would hear her story, let alone watch a movie about it and be so moved that it would restore my faith in faith.

And as the year went on, I started to realize that that is what faith is. Faith is believing that our lives, both the good parts and the bad parts, the explainable and unexplainable, have purpose. Faith is trusting that God has a bigger plan, and that we are all playing a part in its goodness—even when there is seemingly no goodness in sight. Faith is living through the why’s and the how’s and sometimes never getting an answer, but trusting that, perhaps in my struggle, I’m helping someone else find their answer.

I don’t know what 2021 has ahead for us, but I know that each day has meaning. That each moment you are brave enough to live out the life you have ahead of you, you are making a difference. That every up and every down matters. And that there is goodness—goodness that we cannot even imagine—up ahead for each and every one of us. So I encourage you on this day and in this year, to have faith. Have faith in the goodness. Have faith in the light even amongst the dark. Have faith in faith.

“Don’t be afraid. Just have faith.” – Mark 5:36

You can check out my previous words here: Give – Patience – Surrender – Shine

The Year of “Shine”

As a final wrap up of 2019, I wanted to share with you my word of the year.

Since 2015, I have found a faith-based word to focus on each year. In these last five years (!!) I have had: trust, give, patience, surrender, and then for this year I got shine. Every word has found its way to me differently, but shine was perhaps the most direct.

In November of 2018, I was at the wedding of a family friend, and my mom, sister and I were on the dance floor—our usual wedding reception hangout. In between songs, the bride herself walked up to me and put her hand on my shoulder.

“You have a light in you, you know that?”

Me, being bad at receiving compliments, smiled, but was already plotting a way to deny, deflect and run away. But she didn’t back down.

“You have a light in you, something special, and you need to let people see you shine.”

I remember wondering if she could possibly be talking about me, or if maybe it was dark and she’d had champagne like the rest of us, and had meant to say this to one of her friends, or my sister, or someone, anyone else. But she looked at me, and she squeezed my shoulder, willing me to hear her and believe her.

“Okay,” I said, and the word stuck with me.

By the time I rang in 2019, I was sure it was my word, and as usual, I was terrified.

For starters, the dictionary defines shine as: to emit rays of light, or to be eminent, conspicuous or distinguished. So I thought, GREAT, I just have to be wonderfully successful, seen, heard, inspiring and bright. Sounds horrifying. And hard.

For the first couple months, all I could do was put pressure on myself.

You need to shine you need to shine you need to shine.

You need to be BIG! You need to be LOUD! You need to let people see you and hear you. You need to be great.

Then, in March, after six months of training, I ran the LA Marathon. And when I crossed that finish line, I thought, THIS IS IT! This is me, shining. I’m doing it, baby! But then the high wore off and my routine went back to normal, and I felt as dull and unremarkable as ever.

I kept trying to think of new ways I could impress people. New things I could do that would mark me as successful and inspiring and unique and special. I was trying desperately to shine my light, but was doing so in ways that sometimes felt inauthentic or even uncomfortable. Ironically (or not at all), this is when my definition of inspiring, successful, unique, special and shine, began to change. And it started with something I hated most: quitting.

Out of nowhere, I started quitting.

I took a look at the list of goals I’d set for the year and I started crossing things off and making changes. I pulled the bookmarks out of books I was “going to finish,” and I waved the white flag on projects I’d lost interest in. I got rid of clothes and shoes that didn’t fit right but I’d kept because I thought I should wear them, and I stopped buying makeup products “everyone was using” that I didn’t like the look of on me. It was a Marie Kondo approach: anything that didn’t spark joy (or was necessary for survival and wellbeing) was out. And though it felt scary, bad even, like I was letting people down or giving up or being lazy, I knew it was something I had to do.

For so long I have tried to figure out who I am, what I represent and what I want to do with my life. I have tried to find that unique light inside myself, but have often done so with the hope/need of others’ approval. I have based a lot of my self worth in the opinions of others, and I have let my own opinion and self-confidence be swayed in their wake.

This submissive and self-conscious mentality is something I’ve always been aware of, but it is also something I believed I needed to embrace in order to be loved and accepted. When I realized the error in this thinking, and I began to let things go that “didn’t spark joy,” I found that what was left were actually the things that, in my own way, made me shine.

And it is there, in that understanding, that I found my reason for receiving this word. It is there that I found the hope in it rather than just the pressure.

We have all been made to shine. We have been given unique talents, dreams, desires, and destinations, all to mold us into the wonderfully different people that we are. We do not need to be the biggest or the loudest or the most successful to shine, we need only be our most authentic selves. And when we do things that make us happy, make us feel whole, give us a reason to laugh or smile or scream in excitement, that is when we shine the brightest.

Standing on the dance floor of that wedding, I had no idea why God would put someone in front of me and ask me, outright, to shine. I couldn’t figure out why He needed me to be big and brave and loud and remarkable, and I was afraid that if I couldn’t be, I’d be the disappointment I’d always feared. But as I’ve made my way through this year, I’ve found that what He was really asking of me was simply to love the person He made me to be. To reconnect with the goodness that is mine, the uniqueness that is mine, the shine that is mine, and to let go of the fears, expectations and opinions that have been controlling me for too long.

And so, as I step into this new year, I will shine my light, in exactly the way I was made to shine it, and I hope I can encourage you to do the same.

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

The Year of “Surrender”

If you have been around my blog for a little while, you might know that each January I seek a faith-based word to focus on for the year. In the past four years, I’ve gotten trust, give, patience, and then for 2018, I got surrender.

To kick off the year, I bought this book on Amazon. It has one devotional to read for each day of the year, and I figured surrendering 5-10 minutes a day to read them was a good place to start.

I had tried this a couple years ago, not with a devotional, but with prayer each night before I went to bed. After hearing so often at church how important it was to set aside time with God, I decided I’d get down on my knees every night before bed and pray.

Initially I was very nervous. Praying out loud, to me, has always felt a little bit like public speaking—which I hate. I always get self-conscious that I’m not saying the right thing or that I’m not saying enough. Sometimes when we pray in groups at church I spend so much time worrying about what I’m going to say that I miss everything everyone else says.

After a while though, I got the hang of it. Each night I’d kneel down on a blanket and just talk candidly. Most of the time I legitimately started off just by saying, “hey,” like I would if I were talking to a friend, and then I’d just tell Him what was on my mind. When I would close out prayer—I’m not sure why or when I started saying it—I would always ask that He hold my hand.

Just hold my hand, please. Hold my hand and lead me.

I so desperately wanted—and still want—direction of where I should take my life, and I think I just liked the image of being led that way. It made me feel safe, the way a child might feel when their parent takes their hand to cross the street or when a friend takes your hand to guide you through a crowded room. It lets you know that even amongst the chaos, you have someone with you, guiding you forward, and I sought that kind of direction from God.

So as I started this year of “surrender”, I again approached it with that mindset.

I am here, I thought. Show me the magic of this word. Lead me.

As the year went on, I had my share of encouragements and reminders. When my mind would start to slip, surrender would make its way into my sights.

One particularly stressful afternoon, this song popped up on my Spotify:

And there was never a shortage of blog posts, podcasts, Bible verses, etc. that kept finding ways to remind me to let it go. Let it all go.

But perhaps the biggest encouragement, the biggest reminder that not only was letting go okay, but that it was necessary, refreshing, unburdening, and most of all safe, was found in my daily devotional. For amongst the passages—most of which I marked up, circling and underlining and making notes in the margins—I found one phrase over and over:

“I am holding your hand.”

I didn’t just find it once. I found it 32 times.

My own words. My own request. My own prayer handed right back to me over and over again.

I am holding your hand, it said.

And it was in reading those words over and over that I realized what it would truly mean to surrender.

I pictured myself walking up to the front door of my house with my arms riddled in grocery bags (because #onetrip). With the keys in my purse and the doorknob unable to unlock and open itself, I would most definitely have to set a bag or two down. I would have to empty my hand to get what I needed.

All these years, though I asked, pleaded for God to take my hand and lead me, and grew frustrated when I didn’t feel that presence, that hand, it wasn’t because he wasn’t by my side reaching out, it was because my hands were full. Full of everything else I was worried about or focused on. Even though I wanted to take his hand, I wasn’t willing to first let go of the things I was holding onto.

And so, 2018 saw me finally start to loosen my grip. No longer am I trying to win any awards for carrying the most weight all at once. No longer am I trying to balance one grocery bag on my knee and the other on my elbow as I try to reach in my purse to grab the keys. I’m setting the bags down, one by one, and I’m freeing that hand, because I know that His hand is right there, waiting for me to take it.

The Year of “Patience”

As my final wrap-up post for 2017, I want to talk about my word of the year. As mentioned in this post, each January my mom, sister and I seek a faith-based word to focus on for the upcoming year. In 2016, my word was “give” and this past year my word was “patience.”

Ouch, right?

I had tried my best not to hear “give,” but when I started hearing the whispers of “patience,” I all but invested in earplugs.

“Don’t you know…” I asked at the start of the year. “Don’t you know I’m not really in a position to be patient right now?! Don’t you know I have things I need to get done and questions I need to get answered? I need to move, I need to work. If anything, my life could use a heavy dose of impatience.”

These prayers however, did little more than assure me that not only was patience my word, but it was also, unknowingly, my greatest need.

I am at a point in my life when there is pressure coming from a lot of angles. Some of it real, some of it imagined. Pressure to move forward, pressure to settle down, pressure to make a name for myself and start on the path I was meant to follow. And while I’ve been desperate for answers, I’ve also been too impatient to hear them.

To me, patience looked too much like hesitation and sounded too much like indifference, and I didn’t think I had time for that. This world has us convinced that life is passing us by. That if we don’t move fast, we’ll miss the opportunities given to us. But the truth is, opportunity is everywhere, and the only way you’re guaranteed to miss it is by not looking—or in my case, not listening.

I am a creative person, with a lot of hopes and dreams of where I can use the gifts I’ve been given. As a result, I’ve tended to make plans of where I want to go, how I want to get there and how fast. Then, when I sit down to pray, I essentially lay out blueprints and ask for a signature.

Newsflash, Kim: that’s not how it works.

And while I knew this, it was clear I needed it spelled out for me. And so it was:

Over and over…

…and over and over again…

If I were to give God the voice of a millennial teen, it would sound something like, “YO, CHILL. I GOT THIS.”

And while it took me a while. A LONG while. We’re talking most of 2017 type of while. In the last few months of the year, I finally started to listen. And even more, I started to understand.

Patience is not laziness. It is not indifference, confusion or failure. Patience is listening. It’s waiting. It’s breathing. It’s listening for what you need rather than demanding what you want. In being patient, you are being proactive. For patience is not a pause in productivity, but a path to it.

I will always be someone who wants to make plans. Who wants to move and work and make something of myself. But what I’ve learned this year, and what I hope to keep close to my heart in the years to come, is that I need not worry about the plans, for they are not really mine. And while that may be scary to accept because it means I’ll never have the blueprints, and I’ll never know all the steps, I can be comforted in knowing that the steps I do take are in the right direction.

So as I move into 2018, the year of…wait for it…SURRENDER. I again turn to the words I’ve been handed so far. Trust and then give and then patience. They all add up, and they all have purpose. For they are the steps. They are the answers. They are the plans that I’ve been looking for. And I need only listen to let them lead me forward.

The Year of “Give”

For the last two years my mom and I have rang in January 1^st with the One Word devotional.

The idea is simple: focus your attention on one word for the entire year. This is not just any word however. There is no reaching your hand into a bowl and pulling out one of 20 words you and your friends wrote on scraps of paper, and there is no eyes closed scroll and point in the dictionary. No, the word doesn’t even come from you, and it is often the last word you might expect.

Leading up to the start of 2016, I was feeling very overwhelmed. My finances were a disaster and I was constantly worried about whether I’d be able to make loan and rent payments on time, let alone afford groceries and the electric bill. So you can imagine my surprise when I came to find my “one word” was give.

GIVE.

As in, take what I have (which I felt was very little) and pass it on.

I mean, seriously? This had to be a joke.

But there was no denying I was seeing and hearing the word everywhere: in movies, on signs at the grocery store, in almost every casual conversation. I started to wonder if I was making myself crazy, or if perhaps this was all some elaborate prank by my subconscious. Give couldn’t be my word. No. I was pretty sure God wanted to give me a much better word like “whimsy” or “quesadillas.” Spread the good word with quesadillas, Kim! Let that light shine through layers and layers of cheese!

Unfortunate spoiler alert: it wasn’t quesadillas.

About a week after I finished the devotional, I was standing in the middle of my kitchen, knife in hand as I made myself a sandwich for lunch. I was listening to a podcast recommended to me by a friend, when suddenly the host started repeating herself. “Give give give,” she said, “that’s all you can do is give give give.” I couldn’t help it, I laughed. “Really?” I said out loud. Then I set my knife down and leaned my hands into the counter, letting my head fall, my chin hitting my chest. I thought about the balance in my bank account, a number I constantly found myself focusing on, and I thought about the bills that were sure to be on their way. A tear pooled up in the corner of my eye and fell, wetting the paper towel my unfinished sandwich lay on.

“But…” I said aloud, “but what if I don’t have anything to give?”

Suddenly a feeling of peace washed over me, not only relaxing me, but reminding me of the word I’d focused on in the previous year: trust. It too had been a difficult word to accept, as the events leading up to the start of that year had knocked me down hard and left me feeling broken. But now, as I stood in my kitchen a year later, stronger and more confident in my relationship with God than I’d ever been, I was again reminded that He doesn’t make mistakes. This new word was not a joke, and the order in which I’d been given the two words was purposeful.

I nodded slowly. “Okay,” I said, “I trust you.”

A few days later, I doubled my weekly tithes, assuming it was a safe first step. In church, one of the most obvious forms of giving is through Sunday offering, and so I figured, why not show God I’m up to the challenge of “give” by leveling up in that very area of my spiritual life?

“I get it,” I told God, “you just wanted me to trust you with more of my finances. Lesson learned.” Mic drop.

[Insert God laughing here]

As you can probably guess, this wasn’t the lesson. And while this shouldn’t have surprised me, I still found myself frustrated when I realized God wanted more from me, much more.

Over the next few months, I started trying to do extra favors for people. I wrote encouraging notes here, I bought small gifts there; I did my best to give people more. And while at first it seemed straight forward: I give, they say thank you, I began to realize the many different ways I could give and even more, the many different things I was receiving in return. In making people happy, I was given happiness. In offering people compliments, I was given compliments. In serving others, I was given humble gratitude.

So often when we are put into a position to give something we’d rather not, be it tangible things: money or gifts, or intangible things: patience, encouragement or respect, we do so with the sole intent of getting something back. But with this intention comes expectations and with expectations often come dissatisfaction. And though we’d like to blame the dissatisfaction on the ungrateful nature of those whom we believed we did a great service to, it instead stems from our failure to give properly and even more, our inability to receive.

When God handed me “give”, or rather wrapped it up in a box, left it on my doorstep and rang the doorbell 12 times, I thought: I don’t have much, if anything, to give. But when I really started to commit to it, I realized I have absolutely everything to give and even more to receive.

It wasn’t always easy. In fact, there were times when I found myself at a loss, telling God that I honestly and truly couldn’t find a way to keep giving. I was tired, I was stressed out, I was hungry. Remind me again why you couldn’t have given me the word quesadillas?

But every time I was met with doubt or attempted to push the word aside to prioritize those I’d rather focus on, God always found a way to bring it back to the forefront of my attention, once again reminding me how much I’d received from “give.”

Now, as the Year of Give comes to a close, I sit, patient and confident in the new path God will lead me down in 2017. I don’t know what it will look like or the trials that await me in its curves, but I know it will serve an important purpose. For I wouldn’t have been able to make it through this year if I hadn’t first gone through the last. In learning to trust I was able to give and in giving I was able to receive more than I ever knew was possible.