No, I'm not looking at sunflowers unless you count the silk ones that have multiplied on the shelves of my office, gifts of love from dear friends and former co-workers. Of course, I have sunflowers surrounding me in this place! I am beginning this new year in a new home. I have received the gift of a place and a space to write. So today I begin again. I have been feeling such urging from the Spirit to write more, to continue, to let it out...and so here we go again in 2015.
It has been a morning of re-reading last year's journal for inspiration and that is always dangerous. It always brings up so many thoughts, fears, frustrations and anxious moments.
But today it brought me to a new word for the New Year. LOVE.
I have for the last few years, been choosing a word to focus on in the new year instead of making many resolutions. I always make the same resolutions every year, anyway, and sometimes I achieve them, and sometimes I don't. This year I choose to focus on "love".
There are several reasons why I chose this word. In June, I was reading the book, Carry on Warrior by Glennon Melton, author of the "Momastery" blog. http://momastery.com/blog/ She wrote of God doing something amazing to each one of us by putting a bit of him/herself in each of us. She writes of God speaking to her and saying, "Now listen, because this is important: when you were born, I put a piece of myself in you, like an indestructible, brilliant diamond. I placed a part of me in you...that part of the very essence of you, in fact...is me, it is LOVE. It is perfect and it is untouchable. No one can take it, and you can't give it away. It is the truest, deepest part of you, the part that will someday return to me. You are love."
I like the idea of having a piece of God (Jesus), love, in me--indestructible, brilliant, LOVE.
It seems so simple, so easy. I don't have to keep trying so hard! God is already there!
I then read an entry from August of 2013, not long before the wedding of my son, Matt and his wife, Amanda. We had been talking about and planning the wedding service and I had asked Matt what he believed in and he said, "I believe in love." My son and I were on different wave lengths about readings for the wedding. He and Amanda had chosen non-Biblical readings and I was trying to keep my thoughts to myself! I know that my son's faith is different from mine and he wanted his ceremony to be original and reflect his own beliefs.
I had been looking for something to give me inspiration, because sometimes God speaks to me and reassures me that all is well through verses in the Bible. Suddenly I come across a verse from 1 John 4:7 just a few days before the wedding..."Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love."
God had given "me" a verse, to reassure me that He is love and a ceremony reflecting "love" reflected Him.
And so in re-reading my journals, my word for this year has come alive...
To focus on one word for a year helps keep me on track.
More and more I am finding that "love" is much more that a feeling. It is also an action, a decision, a project, a task. Not always easy or fun. So if God is love, and I have love in me, then those actions will be something I can focus on doing this year.
"That's one of the things about LOVE. It doesn't recognize boundaries and never obeys the rules we try to give it." Bob Goff in Love Does
I have made a list of people to love this year!
-husband (Doug)
-children (grandchildren, orphans, school children)
-elderly (Mom, Herb)
-foreigners
-poor
-those in prison
-enemies
-neighbors(New!)
Where will love take me in this year?
" Love does whatever it takes to multiply itself and somehow along the way everyone becomes a part of it. You know why? Because that's what love does." Bob Goff, Love Does
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