One Word: Surrender

Every year, a community of people choose one word each to focus on for the entire year in lieu of making a list of resolutions.  Choosing one word makes it easier to stay focused.  The cool thing about choosing one word is the opportunity to explore it for a whole year, looking at it from different angles, acting on it, and watching it become manifested in your life.       

I'm a little late to the game.  This is my first official year of choosing one word to seek out and strive toward - but it almost didn't happen.  I'm bad at resolutions.  That doesn't really make sense (there seems to be a verb missing), but it's true.  It's not necessarily keeping them or remembering them that is hard - although those may be contributing factors - I'm horrible at coming up with things to resolve.  I make resolutions all year long and then, the one time of the year society dictates I am "supposed" to make resolutions, nothing comes to mind.  Either that or they are silly, insignificant things that I immediately toss.  Well then, this one word thing sounded pretty good to me, so I decided to try it after a few years of reading about other people's words and their experiences.  So, I asked God for a word - what He wanted me to strive after, how He wanted to mold me, what He wanted to show me about myself, about the world, about Himself.  And... wait.  ... wait.  ... wait... ... Okay.

 My word is(!): ________


Nothing.  Nothing came to mind.  Well, not exactly nothing.  I had an overwhelming amount of desires and goals for how I want to grow in Christ, but I couldn't describe half of that in four hundred pages.  One word?  You've gotta be kidding me.  "I'm waiting, God..." 

Let me tell you something about me and patience.  I thought I was patient.  I really, honestly did, months ago.  God has been showing me in the last few months that I am not patient.  Patience in no way describes me.  I have trouble waiting for many things, especially answers, most especially answers from God.  When I'm waiting for something, I become extremely restless.  I pace.  I tap my fingers.  I can't do anything until what I am waiting for appears.  When I'm waiting for an email, I refresh my email at least ten times every hour, fairly often, once a minute.  Yes, I do realize none of this helps but... !!!!!! That's all.       

I'm actually surprised now that God didn't give me the word patience.  It's probably because He knows I'm already thinking about it all the time, now.  I wonder why I didn't think of it myself...

After almost a week of waiting, I was... tired of waiting.  It really wasn't that important to me and I was tired of spending time thinking about it and praying about it, so I gave up.  Yup.  "Fine.  If you're not going to give me a word, I guess I just won't do this one word 365 thing.  I don't really care anyway." Bad attitude :P

Guess what?  I am doing one word 365 because, today, He gave me a word.  "Why did You have to take so long? Would it really have been so bad to give me a word right when I asked for it?" "Weird," I thought, wondering why it came so randomly after I stopped caring.  "Cool".  Maybe He thought I needed to defy cultural standards.  However, it is definitely about patience.  "Right now" is exactly the problem.  I need to be willing to wait however long it takes with peace that God knows what I need and will give it to me in his perfect timing.

So.  Here we go again.

My word for 2012 is surrender.

This year, I want to:

Surrender my life
Surrender my desires
Surrender my hopes
Surrender my time
Surrender school
Surrender my relationships
Surrender my doubts
Surrender my fears
Surrender each moment
Surrender everything that centers around "I" or includes "right now"
Surrender to a love I can hardly begin to imagine
Surrender to a God I want to know more and more
Surrender to His perfect plan for my life, leaving all other things behind

What I really like about One Word 365 is I don't have to know exactly what this word will mean for my life this year, exactly how I want to change.  God can show me new things through this word all year - how He wants me to change, what He wants me to learn.  It's amazing how many aspects one word can have.  Reading other people's posts about the word they chose, I was often surprised by what that word meant to them because I was thinking about it in a completely different way. 


If you could choose one word to focus on this year,
what would it be?


Happy (late) New Year!  I'm excited to see what God has planned for my life and each of yours, and what He wants to show me about surrendering this year!