This year like many years in the past I spent some time in prayer and asked God for a word of the year.  I'm not exactly sure why I started this practice, but I've been doing it for quite some time.  Last year my word of the year was perseverance.  I felt that after 2020 and the shock it was that 2021 was going to need a strong word, so perseverance fit well.

This year as I prayed about my word the Lord revealed the following verses to me:

" For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives,[e] 10 so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, 11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, 12 and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you[f] to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light."

Colossians 1:9-13

Specifically, verse 11, says, ^"being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience,"

From this, the word endurance stuck out to me and that was the word that I chose for 2022.  I posted about it on my Instagram account and shared the truth about this word.  It scares me.

As I suspected already in the first 19 days of 2022 I have had some lessons in my life that have caused me to learn more about what it means to endure.  

As my pastor was preaching on Sunday this year has started off much like the last two, with lots of uncertainty and unrest in our world.  He mentioned how we might be living in the "new normal" the media keeps warning us about, whatever that means.

After the last Sunday in December, our church family was hit by COVID-19 hard for the first time since the pandemic began.  Unfortunately, we were unable to meet in person for almost two weeks.  During this two-week period, I and my family also faced some trials.

You may have heard of something that the world refers to as Murphy's Law.  The first of Murphy's Laws is this, "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. "  

Over the course of those two weeks, the following all happened in my household:

1. We took our new to us Chrysler Pacifica van in to the dealership to be serviced and discovered the transmission was going out on it after we'd only made 10 car payments.
2. Our dishwasher quit unexpectedly.
3. Our dog ate a mouse poison packet while we were replacing said dishwasher with a new one.

After those things had happened and we decided to trade in the van for a vehicle with a better working transmission, I was talking to my 18-year-old son and told him, "whatever you do avoid choosing endurance as your word of the year."  He laughed and said, "You did say you were scared of it."  

But all joking aside, even though I have already 'endured" much in the first few days of 2022, God has also blessed us much as well.

We now have a new to us Nissan Rogue that has a lower monthly payment, lower insurance, and a lower car tag.  We have a working dishwasher and our hound dog is still alive and well.

God is already teaching me much in 2022 which I am attempting to share with my children as I try to teach them what endurance in the Christian life means.