Also known as: My word for 2012
Remember how I was looking for a word to use for 2012?
I think I found it.
Soon after I wrote that post, I already felt that I had an idea of the word I will claim as my own for 2012. But of course, I did not want to choose too hastily, and I didn’t want to decide on a word just because I need a word. I want it to be mine, I want it to be a word that calls to me, one that I can claim and will claim me for the next eleven ten months of 2012. I gave myself a deadline: by my 26th birthday, I should have a word, a draft five year plan and a vision board. Talk about plans, yes?
So I had a list of words that I wanted to choose: initiate, grow, explore, awesome, amazing…but I keep on going back to this particular word. To love. It wanted to choose it already to get it over with, but to be perfectly honest, I was scared at what claiming this word entails. This isn’t just love in the romantic sense but love in every possible aspect. It sounds lovely at first, but when I really think about it, I know for sure that it’s not going to be easy. In fact, I believe it will be downright challenging.
But then I think of the rewards. I mean, it’s love. Again, not in the romantic sense, but you know how they say love changes things, love is a miracle, love is all that? I believe that, too. And because I believe that God is love, I also think that choosing love as my word will bring me closer to Him.
Again, I didn’t want to decide. Until Valentine’s Day passed by and I got back from my first SFC ICON and…well, the experiences for that week kind of sealed the deal and made me accept the idea that this word may have possibly claimed me before I finally decided with it.
So yeah: my word for 2012 is LOVE.
Again, it’s not just romantic love, but love in all aspects — love for God, family, friends, colleagues, strangers. Loving my work, doing the things I love, finding out these things I love, going after the things I will love. Loving when it’s easy but especially when it’s hard and inconvenient. Loving the people who love me back and the unlovable. Not being afraid of love, choosing to love, always choosing love above all else. And finally, yes, let’s include romantic love, too.
I have a page in my planner where that arrow in the photo points, and there I wrote (in my messy script) the things I wrote in the previous paragraph and what St. Paul wrote about love in his letter to the Corinthians. I think this pretty much captured the essence of what love is really all about (this chapter also shows how challenging loving can be, but I’ll probably reserve that for another post).
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Love.
