New Year - And A Much Needed New Word of the Year - Courage

For the last couple of years, I have responded to a prompt often used by other bloggers, to choose and write about a word of the year. A one word focus to use as a guide to the thoughts, choices of activities and experiences in the new year. 

My word of the year in 2020 was TRUST. It took on significant meaning as I, my family and the world navigated through the questions and concerns of a pandemic and political upheaval.

It was truly a word that I repeated over and over to myself to stave off the intrusion of the much more often heard word of  2020 - FEAR.

Courage to plant and
courage to bloom!

Fear was not only one of the most prominent words of 2020 but the dominate emotion in many of the corners of life during the past year. It has been a hard one to shake these last months. Feelings of fear have been stoked by the media, by information, by mis-information, by political rhetoric and by my imagination. Sometimes, it has been fanned during conversations with friends and family or even in exchanges with strangers. It has altered our lives and damaged our health both physical and mental and dare I speculate that panic has possibly caused as much damage as the virus itself even as we have manuvered to avoid and/or recover from it. 

As I contemplated the idea of choosing yet another word for another new year, my biggest hope is to counteract the imposition of fear in my life, in an even bigger and stronger way. So the word I have chosen for myself for 2021 is - Courage. Despite feeling very little of it over the days of 2020, I am choosing it as an anchor to my thoughts for the days ahead. I can only hope that pinning that word to the top of my mind will bring the much needed virtue as I step into the uncharted territory of the future in 2021. 

Courage - After the year we've had, this year of 2021 will require it. Courage will be needed to continue to take steps forward, to plant without certainty of a harvest and to bloom despite messy surroundings and without guarantees of the hoped for results. There will still be beauty and joy and love. To open my eyes to see it may require courage but I'm up for it. How 'bout you?

"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go." Joshua 1:9