Hi friends. This week on the Raised Catholic podcast, I’ll reveal my word of the year for 2024 and my process behind finding it. And whether you use a process like mine which is contemplative in that I listen for God’s leading, or choose one in prayer, or choose a word that reflects your goals and hopes for the year, or whether you use a random word generator, it’s all good and it’s all helpful!
One word can become a compass, a lightpost, and a guide in ways that are hard to predict when you choose it (or it chooses you). As I discerned in late 2019, I had hoped for ‘spring’, inspired by my favorite scripture (Isaiah 43:19), but I was resigned (and a little bummed) when it was clear that my word for 2020 would be ‘walk’ - and then I proceeded to take approximately 1,000 walks that year, the year that everyone walked through one day or one hour at a time. As you arrive at it, you can never quite know how a word will serve or focus you once the year gets going.
For 2023, my word was ‘path’, which is different from ‘walk’, because it denotes an intentionality on the part of the path-maker (God, obvi). I had an inkling that 2023 would include some good surprises, especially toward the end, and I was right about that. But this past December as I discerned my word for 2024, it was images (of birds and flowers) and songs-I-woke-up-singing and a peculiar, unseasonable kind of light here in my corner of New England that finally brought it to me. The word that I most hoped for in 2020 seems to be coming around again, and this time our good God seems to have nodded his head in assent to his dear daughter who just. cannot. wait.
Because my word this year is springtime.
And I don’t know how it will come, in what form or style, but I am shakily opening my hands to receive the good that God has for me - the seeds that may finally warm, open and sprout, the work that may finally flower and bloom, the unexpected blossoming that can result from trust and open hands and letting outcomes (finally) go. So we’ll see what happens as the year unfolds for each of us. Thanks as always for your prayers, and know of my prayers for you.
Friends, please listen to Raised Catholic episode 157: Word of the Year 2024 on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts (or read the transcript, and then please come back here and tell me about your word and how you found it. I love hearing your stories, so thanks in advance!