WORD(S) TO LIVE BY

Have you discovered your Word, or Words, for 2019?

A few years back, a new tradition came into being: Choose a word that expresses what you want to do or be or achieve, or reminds you of something you need for your well-being.

I've blogged about Heather Lende's Find the Good, a book about a difficult time in her life that turned out better than she could have expected, partly because of a loving and caring community that supported her and her family and partly because a friend challenged her to sum up a philosophy she would give her children, in three words. Three words!

Now three words seem inadequate to this writer who is used to penning 300 words to explore a topic--and that's not even in depth; more like, an extended intro to the idea, with a few examples to keep the reader's eyes from drifting shut. (You know who you are....)

But after I read Heather Lende's book, I accepted the challenge. Sometimes I came up with four words; sometimes I needed only one. Peace was my word one year. Accept worked for another year. And I often found myself quoting Heather's book title--Find the Good--because it helped me get through whatever bog I found myself floundering around in.

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Sometimes my word or phrase is handed to me. Like this year.

In his Christmas Day sermon, our priest said, "God breaks into our lives in unexpected ways." (Paraphrased--I can't find my bulletin where I wrote it.)

A few days later, the word unexpected showed up again, probably in a conversation that I don't recall now. 

And in a book of quotations I got from my Ohio daughter, I found this by C. S. Lewis:

     When we lose one blessing,
     another is often most unexpectedly
     given in its place.

Enough already--I'll use the word unexpected.

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I have to confess, I have a hang-up here. You know what the synonyms are for unexpected?

   unforeseen, unanticipated, unpredicted, not bargained for,
   unlooked for, unhoped for, out of the blue, without warning,
   without notice

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Yesterday morning I actually woke up before the alarm. Checked that I was awake, mostly alert. Did a few stretches to help with emerging from my covers. Yawned a few times. All the usual. Went to the kitchen to turn on the coffee maker and looked out the window. Wow! Snow!! Not a lot, but mostly the lawns and street and roofs were covered in white stuff. Real snow! And it was still coming down..................

Unexpected? Yes, indeed! Nothing about snow in the forecast when I went to bed. It was entirely without notice, unpredicted.

A surprise, yes? But this time was different--I loved the surprise of snow that morning. We'd been having temps in the 40s and 50s, off and on through December and into January. That warmth felt unnatural, as if we weren't going to have winter after all. Yesterday's white landscape felt just right. January 8th, snow.

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I'm going to try that embracing stuff, see if I can incorporate the unexpected, whatever it is, into my life. What's the sense of worrying about what's going to happen? How much energy does it take to think of all the bad stuff that could happen in any situation--and then none of it does, and all that energy was wasted?

Do I have to be happy about everything that comes my way? No, some of it isn't the stuff of happiness, contentment, or joy. Death of a long-time church member, recently diagnosed brain tumor in a friend's relative, retirement of a person we've had serve us for years . . . . 

We try to focus on the positive response--but that's not always possible. Assimilating these events into our lives may be the only thing we can do; and from that point, there's the possibility we can learn another life lesson.

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Embrace the Unexpected.
I'll work on that.

All your words are in
this set of blocks!