At the start of each new year I find myself thinking about dates that would make fun birthday or wedding days. Like 03.02.01. That’s been a bit ago. Or 07.08.09. Still a decade ago. More recently, 02.02.20. Wonder how many have planned to get married this year on 10.10.20? How many babies are going to have those numbers for their date of birth?
I can’t write 2020 without thinking of the show I grew up watching. 20/20. A measurement of visual acuity. With that in mind, you’d think if someone were going to choose a word for this year, the start of this decade, it’d be vision.
Our family had the opportunity to be gone over the Christmas holiday season in celebration of our Eve of Christmas Eve Baby’s 16th Birthday. While I wouldn’t necessarily recommend delivering a baby the week of Christmas, I did discover this upside of a Christmas vacation alongside the 16th birthday festivity. I have to admit though, being away from home, while singing such Christmas lyrics as “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” was unusual to say the least. Nevertheless, however different it was, in regard to what’s traditional, proved to be equally as memorable. We sang a rather suitable song this Christmas, “Mele Kalikimaka.” Ten days in the “land where palm trees sway” was undoubtedly a beautifully “green and bright” Christmas. (Thanks, Mr. Crosby!)
While we were gone, I felt the Lord stirring a word in my heart for 2020.
This was new for me. Typically, Brandon and I write out our goals for each year. I’ve never felt the nudge to focus on one specific word.
My 2020 Word = Laughter.
During the course of the trip I simply laughed, and in doing so, began to realize how my laughter has diminished through the years.
I shared this word with Brandon and the boys over dinner on Christmas Day. They didn’t passively listen. They didn’t delicately disagree. They immediately confirmed my lack of laughter remembering a time when I was more inclined to give a giggle or a chuckle.
This isn’t to say I’m not joyful. I have the joy of the Lord.
Joy isn’t dependent on our circumstances. The joy we have in our hearts is ever-present, in the sweet seasons and the painful places.
We see this in the following Scriptures:
Isaiah 51:3 ESV For the Lord comforts Zion; He comforts all her waste places and makes her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.
I Thessalonians 1:6 ESV And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit,
So, there I had a word. Stirred in my heart. Confirmed by my family. My focus, and desire, was to seize more moments of laughter.
And then, just as life would go, a week later I received some information that was a blow to my emotions. A blow. I had such inability to rise above the grief of the information I was given. How in the world could I have felt that word “laughter?” How? But then, a simple communication of one Happy New Year’s Day text message helped me regain my focus. Of all the things I could have received, one friend, having no clue as to the heaviness I was experiencing, sent me the funniest meme that literally made me laugh out loud. There, with eyes swollen from crying, and a headache throbbing with each beat of my heart, my phone “dinged” and it was as if God Himself was saying, “Hey—I see you. I know you. I got this. Now focus this 2020 on that simple word of laughter.”
I knew that instant of a reaction was the Lord reaching down and hugging me with some goodness He has in store for this year.
In efforts to sharpen my awareness of funny things, out of a desire to not miss the moments, in commitment to keeping focused on the gift of laughter, I am journaling the specific stories of what made me laugh each day.
It’s amazing how we find what we so intentionally seek out.
I even sat at my great Aunt Sarah’s memorial service and was blessed with sweet laughter of the memories she created and left for us. I aim to live the same.
Joy of the Lord-- absolutely.
But laughter along with it-- even better!
Psalm 126:2 ESV Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then they said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.”
