At the beginning of each new year, I like to choose a word of the year. This has been a tradition that I started in 2015. Instead of creating a new year’s resolution, I pick a word of the year that symbolizes what I want to focus on and aim for that year. My past words include: joy (2015), hope (2016), adventure (2017), patience (2018), intentional (2019), and grace (2020).
When I begin the process of choosing a word, I reflect back on the past year by finding themes or patterns. Then, I look forward to the new year and ask myself the question of what I would like the new year to look like. As I envision the new year, I write down a few words that describe that. Then, I look up the words in the dictionary to find the exact meaning to my vision.
2020 was the year of many storms and my world was shaken on so many levels, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Before the pandemic hit in 2020, I was a beautiful house standing firmly on the ground. As the pandemic occurred, this beautiful house began to fall apart. Each storm tore a piece from the house, leaving it to a bare structure.
As I looked forward to 2021, I needed to rebuild myself again especially what was destroyed in the storm of 2020. To describe that, I chose restore and renew for my words of the year. Restore means “bring back into existence or reestablish.” Renew means “to begin or take up again, to restore or replenish, to revive or establish, or to make new again.” Their dictionary definitions were pretty similar and restore was in renew’s definition, so I decided to not choose just one word but both words. As a result of restoring and renewing myself this year, I hope to be a lovely and lively house again.
