my one word

I have a love/hate relationship with choosing a word to govern my focus for the year.  Inevitably, it seems, when I choose a word the lessons and trials begin.

For example, the year I *reluctantly* chose patience as my word, our paychecks were late, promises from people were sloooooow to be fulfilled, doctor offices were slooooooow to call us back, pharmacy issues snowballed which resulted in us waiting and waiting and waiting to get insurance approval or medicines in stock or a prescription filled, our car stopped working and we needed to buy a new one and our car dealership was slooooooow to come through with various things so we were without a car for roughly two weeks.

Then there was the year I chose frugal as my word and within six weeks financial struggles cascaded and it seemed like we ended that year waaaaay worse than we began it from a financial perspective.

Last year was the word tidy and I won't even begin to tell you how messy my kitchen table is right this very minute.  *sigh*

So this year, I took even longer than normal thinking and observing, looking for areas in my life that were weak, could use some work.  Over and over and over God showed me prayer.  People would randomly bring it up, you know you need to pray more.  People would text or call or email and ask me to pray for them.  The desire to talk to God, to commune with Him has increased over the past few weeks, and so I decided that I would choose the word prayer to govern my focus for 2017.