WORD OF THE YEAR {2021}

Do you choose a word of the year? Since 2008, I’ve chosen a word to reflect on throughout the year.

*The idea of a word of the year was first introduced to me by my dear friend Heather. Once upon a time, she had a lovely blog full of beautiful inspiration. I’m very glad to call her friend. She told me of Ali Edwards, OneWord365, and her own collection of beautiful inspiration.

Wonder – a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.

In Arizona, we lived next to the Sonoran Preserve. I prayed to never take the view of the mountains for granted. The sunsets, the brilliant blue sky, and the blooms on the cactus became a love song. Moving away from Texas for the first time presented a bitter gift of silence for the first time in many years. My heart wondered what the desert’s job was to teach me.

Over the next 12 years, I was undone and rebuilt. Miscarriages became my first suffering, followed by consolation in adoption.

The next challenge came as an attachment disorder and dyslexia. Then consolation in my physical healing.

And life seemed golden. I learned that family runs so wide and so deep. Family does not look like a commercial with everyone wearing perfect denim and coordinating colors. Family looks like praying for the homeless, the addicted, the imprisoned, the hurting, and the lost. People entered my life and my home that I would have never crossed paths with before. My humility through these experiences revealed layers of naivety that I am almost embarrassed about. I say almost because I believe that timing and experience played a critical role in accepting these experiences with gentleness.

For example, I visited prisons in high school, but I didn’t see the people there. I prayed for them as a whole and felt sad for their circumstances. But God didn’t need my pity on them. He was waiting for me to be mature enough to walk alongside them through the unknown. He hoped I would use my voice to educate and advocate for those we forget about daily. He wanted me to see them as His children and know that there is not one day that He has forgotten them.

I was sure that I had been in the Valley, never to reenter again. The miscarriages were awful enough to count for a lifetime of suffering.

Nope.

My next journey was coming soon. A pandemic mixed with a side of unemployment meant I was now the one waiting in the bread line and picking up food from the local Elementary school every Wednesday. This gentle reminder of the phrase that took me so long to understand – “There but by the grace of God, go I.”

And then the consolations poured down like rain. Fostering one of the most beautiful babies in the universe, a dream job, a sold house, and a dream house back home in Texas all happened so quickly, I still wake up unsure of what room I’m actually in, disoriented in a pile of His goodness.

We packed up and made our way in December, retracing the steps that we had taken in 2009. We listened to the same music and thanked God for our family growing from four to seven.

After we arrived, I wanted to badly to have my word ready to go for the banner year we are all hoping for. (Sorry, 2021, you have a lot of pressure on you.)

Nothing was coming. I love words and I believe in the power of words, but I wasn’t tripping over anything.

And then, one Saturday afternoon, I was driving down a country road behind our home. It snowed lightly, but the tapping sound on the windows was a jolt to my absent thoughts. I looked up to see the most beautiful road, lined by trees on each side, creating an arbor of passage. And there it was, the beauty that I wanted to never take for granted signed with a tapping on my heart to look for beauty in every moment.

So, my word for 2021 is wonder.

May we always look up and see what He has put in our paths with wonder.