A Word for 38...

Hello, friends! 

First of all, Happy New Year! May 2023 be better than 2022 in every possible way! 

There will be an Urbana recap post coming soon (spoiler alert: it was awesome!) but with my birthday coming up, I wanted to officially announce my word for the year. 

As you know, every year, I give myself a word or theme for the year. It's an area where I feel like God is calling me to focus. Last year, the phrase was "Everything is Worship" and I tried to focus on making sure that everything I did was centered around trying to be worshipful. The year before that, the word was "Balance," and I tried to give each thing the time that it deserves. 

This year, I want to focus on "Compassion." Namely, I want to have compassion be my first reaction to others. 

If I'm absolutely honest with myself, it's way to easy to judge people. When I hear about people making poor decisions, whether it by politicians, friends, family, whoever, my first instinct is to judge them. How could they possibly make that decision? What were they thinking? Man, that was not smart. This year, I want to lead with compassion instead of judgment. That doesn't mean that I will agree with every decision that is made or think that every call is a good one. What I'm hoping it means is that I see people as God sees them and view them through a lens of love. 

We'll see where "Compassion" takes me. I know one are where that's going to be difficult is when the kids wake up early or have trouble going to sleep. I know that it'll be harder to have compassion on people I don't know and read about in the news. I also know that our God is a God of compassion, so this pursuit could make me a little more like Him, which is never a bad thing. 

Have an excellent day! 

~Adam