It’s my favorite time of year! Of course, I love the Christmas season, there’s all the fun traditions and celebrations. Gathering with faily and friends, lots of wonderful memories made. But what I have found is that reviewing my word for the year and looking forward to the next word has created an anticipation probably close to what I felt as a child waiting for Christmas morning.
2023 was really a crazy year of transitions and celebrations for our family. Honestly, I feel like a broken record, but we did a lot of celebrating! And I think I’ll keep on talking about it because it doesn’t get talked about enough. Or maybe it’s that we are the first of our friends to go through all these transitions, so we lead the way.
When joy is a habit, love is a reflex. – Bob Goff
This past year we had a daughter get married, a daughter graduate high school and start her freshman year of college, our baby finished middle school and started high school, a pregnancy announcement from the newlyweds, kids moving back home and a daughter graduated from college this past week. Whew! Lots of change, celebrations and a little bit and sometimes a lot of sadness mixed in because everyone’s growing up so quickly.
The root of Joy is gratefulness. – David Steindl-Rast
Along with all the change this year, I decided it was a good time to get a job. Because somehow, I thought I’d be bored as my kids got older. This was before I knew there was going to be a beautiful grandbaby on the way! After a bit we figured out that it just wasn’t a good fit for our family, so I am now once again at home. And I’m so busy I’m wondering how I had time to work. Kudos to all the women who are out there working and somehow keeping their home and their family going because I couldn’t do it. My husband is amazing and super helpful, but I just couldn’t get a handle on life. Again, I really do want to blog more about this soon as I’ve really been dealing with a lot of shame about this. But that’s for another time.
Joy is the echo of God’s life in us. – Columba Marmion
My word served me well this year. There were times I did dig down for the joy. All in all, I enjoyed (ha, see what I did there) my word this year. I’m thankful for the three simple letters that helped me focus and remember, it’s not outward happiness but an inner response to knowing Jesus. God is so good, bringing my word to me many times throughout the year, just when I needed that reminder. As always, we are never really done with our word, we take it with us. Along with all the valuable lessons we learned and the gift it was for the season we needed it.
In your presence is abundant Joy. Psalm 16:11
One of my favorite exercises I did this year through the One Little Word project with Ali Edwards, was create a manifesto. This is the less cute version as canva and I were fighting earlier today.
Did you choose a word for 2023? How did it go? I’ve already started thinking about my word for 2024, it’s gonna be a good one!
I’ll be back to share about my word for 2024 soon. Until then……
I will continue to find joy in the journey!
ange
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