The Word for 2011....

....that i decided on was the word "JOY".

The idea is to pick a word that you want to 'define' your upcoming year instead of having a bunch of resolutions. We did three resolutions as a family, but i still wanted a 'word' for the upcoming year. It actually wasn't hard to pick this word as i seemed to keep 'running into it' over the past few months, starting at a MOPS meeting.

One of our mentors gave a devotion on JOY and explained what the letters in JOY stood for. I had never heard of the word 'standing' for anything other than it's definition. JOY, it seems, stands for:

Jesus
Others
Yourself

Our sweet mentor gave the the wooden J, O, Y letters she used in her devotion. Those letters are hanging on my board in my laundry room because, you know, the laundry room seems to be "my" room of the house, so i put up a bulletin board to hang stuff on.

A friend sent me a small notebook for Thanksgiving. On this notebook was my word, JOY.

On my cute silver Christmas tree, was my word JOY that Emma picked up while we were in Target together.

There has to be a message in this word, not only for me, but for others. It's an easy word to remember, but what it stands for is so powerful. As a Mommy, my "order" seems to be:

~Emma
~Emma
~My husband
~Stuff i want to do
~God
~Me.

Not exactly what it should be, is it? It's almost like God is an after thought for me some days or He gets a quick prayer or good morning/goodnight/i'm thankful during some days. I'm sure that God doesn't like this....in the book, Crazy Love, Francis Chan calls this "leftovers" for God.

btw, if you haven't read Crazy Love, please, please take the time to read it. It is an amazing, hard on your soul, book to read but it will change your heart in ways you can't imagine. I have a copy if someone needs to borrow one, just know that i've underlined and written all over my copy.

And so, JOY it is.....unlike last year, i've not figured out what my word "Run" was all about. But, it did make me think and maybe that's a good thing for a Mommy to do when she's not running around in circles.

JOY.

It's a good word.