Joy

For the last 6 years, I have chosen a word for the year. Since at least 2014 I have chosen scripture verses that I wanted to pray for the kids or the month. In 2019, I started to choose a word that would cause me to focus on my scripture verses for the year. It always helped me figure out what we wanted to do for the year. Usually, the word would be something that would describe what was going on that year or what I wanted to figure out what God was telling us and what to focus on.

This year (2023) I was really struggling with the word that our family was going to focus on for this year. When I chose a word, that word also helped me decide what scripture verses that I choose for each month and for each kid. 2023 was a hard year - there were just some tough things that happened that year - John's dad dying, leaving our church, and restarting in a new town and new church. That was really hard and caused me to be very anxious about what was going to happen in 2024. I was sharing with one of my friends just some things that I was thinking about as we go into 2024. The thing that she said was that I pray that God will give you a spirit of Joy. After she said that I paused and just made the decision that Joy was going to be my word for the year. Joy is one of those words that you think about during the Advent/Christmas season and I wasn’t sure how Joy was going to fit into the entire year. So I started to research the definition to what is biblical JOY.

Joy (biblical joy) is more than a happy feeling. Which is something that I appreciate…..I don’t have to have Joy like what you see in the movie Inside Out. Joy is a lasting emotion from the choice to trust that God will fulfill His promises. This year I am planning to learn more about what Joy means.

So this year my word is Joy. I trust that on this journey that we call life, God will fulfill His promises to us. He will sustain and he is holding us in His palm as we go through 2024.

Do you choose a word for the year? If so what’s your word? With focusing on Joy….I will be focusing more and wanting to learn more about what it means to have Joy.