I’m now nine months into my year of wonder.
I decided somewhere around month 6 that I wished I could scrap the word and start with a new, more exciting word, but I know that isn’t how these kinds of things work. After seven years of living out the practice of adopting a word with which to inspire growth and endure struggle, I know that my word deserves the full year particularly when I don’t want it to, and especially when it doesn’t end up meaning what I thought it would.
Enter September.
I found myself spiraling with the reality of life and being annoyed at myself for how I was handling it. I was “supposed to” sleep in on the morning of September 1st, but motherhood didn’t allow it. I added this wake up call to my mental list of all the responsibilities that I know in my heart that I want and love but just couldn’t take anymore without feeling like I might lose it.
This also allowed an entrance to another reminder of my struggle: there’s not a one role or responsibility that is demanding something of me that I want to give up, but in the process of working as hard as humanly possible to keep up with everything, I have been slowly and unintentionally giving up on who I was created to be. I’ve been too busy trying to be light, love, and kindness to sufficiently invest in what it takes to be those things.
Thankfully, just when I was really getting annoyed at wonder, wonder stopped me in my tracks and showed me just how much I needed more of it. Between encouraging words from a friend yesterday and stopping on the side of the highway to clean up a sick kid on the way to church this morning, wonder demanded I take some time to consider and appreciate it for the absolutely beautiful thing that it is. For the first time, I learned what wonder is meant to be to me.
Wonder is grace.
Wonder is moments of joy and learning in the midst of overwhelm.
It is an undeserved gift I could never repay, no matter how hard I work to do it – sometimes extravagant, other times simple.
It’s kind and familiar faces stopping to hand me a towel while I clean up the mess in my backseat.
It’s getting to read a happy book after a long day.
It is lessons learned from experience.
It is the cross in the midst of chaos, boldly lighting the way to hope and freedom.
No matter how big or small the gift that wonder hands me, it begs me to walk in the way of humility. It reminds me that I’m neither meant to or able to do good on my own.
Wonderful grace is both overlooked and underappreciated when I am too busy to breathe and notice its constant presence, yet its power is greater than all that surrounds me with questions, exhaustion, and defeat.
I can now genuinely consider this year, with all of the demands and struggles that have and continue to come with it, a year of wonder. A year of opportunities for grace to abound, for grace can only show its full potential when I fully realize just how much I need it.