Last week, I invited you, my readers, to submit your words for 2023. From what you sent me, 2023 will be filled with excitement and promise. Enjoy!
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In years past my words have always been focused on healing or managing some sort of pain or angst. One year it was ‘breathe’ and for two years it was ‘release’ (that was a hard task for me!) Last year, a phrase, ‘it’s what I’m working with’… a hopefully humorous move toward self-acceptance.
This year I wanted my word to represent living, doing, being bold and sassy in the face of anxiety and fear. My ‘word’ this year describes how I will choose to conduct myself toward joy… I will be ‘gutsy-glorious!’
Deborah, Beldenville, Wisconsin
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Word for 2023: Mine is rejuvenate. After a fall in 2018 that changed my life, I declare I am putting that all behind me and plan to rejuvenate my body, mind and soul by feasting on God’s Word.
Charlene, Deer Creek, Minnesota
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My word for 2023: Regenerate
Becky, Mahtomedi, Minnesota
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Trust (v.) = to believe in the reliability, strength, ability of someone or something
No idea what’s coming
Running anyhow
Trying too hard
Giving up?
No. Giving in . . .
To Him.
Avis, Newfolden, Minnesota
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The following submission contains excerpts from Dori’s blog, With Robin and Flowers. (Click HERE to subscribe. It’s a delightful read. You’ll thank me later.):
The phrase that came to my mind was “love is patient.”
At the dinner table tonight, after a rather pleasant day, one of my children got an attitude about the meal. Because, actually, this person preferred it (for once) and wanted a third enormous helping.
“No, that’s enough. You need to eat the other meals offered you during the day.”
Head hanging, the tiny person mumbled.
“Sorry, what was that?” Philip [their father] asked over his by-now-cold bowl of noodles.
“I wish I had my own home. So I could be alone.”
I bit my lip to keep from chortling—or snapping how I wish I had my own home to be alone in too.
From the mouth of babes spring some real fleshly truth, people.
So often, I feel deeply blessed by the duties that consume my life.
But sometimes, the duties test me. Like, TEST ME.
The housekeeping, with its cyclical pattern of dirty clean dirty clean, and all elements (clothes, floors, surfaces, dishes, children, dog…) at varying points in that process. If you want everything clean at once, well, too bad. Hire someone.
My sister-in-law once said, “Before I became a parent, I used to think I was so patient…” and I instantly fell prey to the covetous heart—as I realized, I could never have said such a thing about myself. Many people have told me how nice I am, but nice isn’t the same as patient. In fact, I’ve come to believe that my supposed “niceness” is merely the polite combination of deafness, a quick smile, and nonconfrontationalness.
My Dad often says to me, “We’re all on a journey,” and my achiever beaver side pulls out a checklist. “So can we just get there already?!”
But as hippie as it sounds to say, the journey so often is the destination, in that this life is the one God is using to make us more like Christ.
The hurry-up-edness buried not so deep in my soul just can’t with it sometimes. I want to know why and why not now.
The bread has been in for forty-five minutes. It should be done by now. (I don’t have time for this!)
I taught this child how to do that, for a super long time. Why can’t they just be good at it already?! (I don’t have time for this!)
In the TV series The Chosen, why can’t Jesus just tell Peter to knock it off and make him and Matthew get along from the beginning? “Your brother (in Christ) is your best friend. Now hug it out and act like you love each other.” (Jesus’s ministry is just for three years. HE doesn’t have time for this!)
But He does. And He doesn’t hurry them along. This earthly reflection on the life of Christ takes me back to His Word: how patient He has always been. And then I think of my life. How patient He has always been with me.
Perhaps one habit I’ll take into 2023 is slowing my responses. Is authenticity to our truest fleshiest state actually being honest? Or is deferring ourselves to Our Elder, our Father in Heaven, the best picture of truth?
Dori, Sparta, Wisconsin
