OLW 2012 - Reluctantly Chosen

In 2010 my small group at church decided to work on a One Little Word study together. It’s based on several sites/bloggers but the best site is the http://www.oneword.org/ site. The idea is to adopt one word each year and focus your biblical studies, prayer and meditation on this word.

In 2010 I chose the word Transform. I was going through a bit of transformation both mentally and physically. I had a great accountability partner. We met several times during the year and talked through the worksheets and our successes and failures related to our words and to other goals in our lives. We grew to be close friends. Today she’s one of my closest friends.

In 2011 I chose the word Trust. As I have worked with my therapist one theme that comes up is trust. I have a hard time trusting people and myself. So, I thought this would be a good word to spend some time looking at and seeing what the Bible and God has to say about it. Well, it was a disappointing year word-wise. For the first month or so I had no accountability partner. I tried to partner with a woman in our group but she didn’t seem to have much interest in connecting and, honestly, I didn’t make many, if any, attempts to connect with her. At one point in the year, I actually forgot what my word was. Ack! That wasn’t supposed to happen.

So, for 2012 I’m struggling with picking word. It’s just not coming easily to me. I wanted my word to be commit or commitment. I have a habit of starting something and not finishing – diets, afghans, organizing, bible studies, books. The list is almost endless. You name it I can name a time that I committed to doing it and then didn’t. As I started researching the word commit I kept getting pointed to Ephesians Chapter 6 and other verses. There was a common word or concept throughout the verses. The word is Stand.

I’ll be honest, I don’t really like it as my Word. There are so many things that can be done with the word Stand:

• Stand firm
• Stand up
• Stand alone
• Standing
• Stand out
• Stand by
• Stand for

The list is almost endless.  How many ways can you think of to use the word Stand?

I just have no idea where God is taking me and my OLW this year. I’m not really sure which scripture I will be using. I had one picked out (which I lost) but it turned out that the word Stand in that scripture didn’t mean standing with God or righteousness. It dealt more with standing with evil. Yikes! So not only do I need to pick a scripture still I need to do very careful research and make sure the verse(s) mean something positive.

Regardless of all of that, I am making the declaration.

My
One Little Word
for
2012
is

Stand