5 Years of Words

For the past five years, near the beginning of the year, I have been praying and asking God for a word. With every new word, the Lord teaches me something through it and the word He gives has always summed up the year in ways that I could never imagine or guess beforehand.

My first ever word was in 2021 - 'surrender'. Funny enough, I ended up surrendering a lot to Christ that year.

My second word, for 2022, was 'rebirth'. That one was confusing, as I had already been a Christian for years and therefore had been born again, but then, I gleaned exactly what He meant by it. One of the definitions for rebirth is this: {Rebirth: a period of new life, growth, or activity; a revival}. Call it a coincidence, but my faith ended up skyrocketing that year. The new growth was undeniable.

In 2023, the word was 'acceptance', which revealed itself in the way you'd expect, the letting go of things I couldn't change, but even more so in this definition of the word: {Acceptance: the actions of consenting to receive or undertake something being offered}. Acceptance was an invitation to receive goodness from God, to EXPECT it even, instead of jumping to 'worse case scenarios' like I had been prone to do. It was God reshaping my brain to instantly trust Him.

Then came 2024, the year I became preganant after almost 8 years of infertility. The word given to me was 'understanding'. That one was a doozy. Yes, I did grow in my knowledge of God, His ways, and His Word as expected. And yes, a new level of much needed discernment was unlocked (in fact I think that is a spiritual gift I picked up that year), but what threw me for a loop was the deeper life understandings that God revealed to me that forever changed what I knew to be true. God broke some false concepts in my mind during a time when the first trimester of pregnancy was 'rocking my world' - in the good and bad sense of the term. I now know though that this was exactly what I needed during a time when I was forced to let myself rest.

And last year, the year that my miracle son was born, the Lord chose 'delight'. What a perfect year for it! But what I came to learn is that 'delight' wasn't about my personal happiness. No indeed. It was about growth through moments. It was about wearing the garment of praise in every situation, yes - even the less than delightful ones. It was ultimately about delighting in my Creator, my Abba, my Everything. And the word 'love' walked beside my word 'delight' that year, reminding me that the Lord loves me and delights in me.