My Word For The Year 10 Months Late

There are 52 days remaining in 2023, and I’ve figured out my word for the year: Endurance.

It may not seem like the best choice considering I haven’t written a blog since December 2022 even though I had every intention of showing up in this space. But I was busy enduring — or at least trying to.

I tend to think endurance is gritting your teeth, gripping tight the handles, powering through the pain and not caring how you get to the end. There’s an element of stubbornness to it. Sometimes I think of it as fighting the good fight with this righteous anger that drives your persistence. Other times endurance is just getting out of bed in the morning and putting one foot in front of the other to make it through your day.

Endurance isn’t needed when everything is going well. It’s not needed when you get what you want. You don’t have to endure when life is “easy.” Endurance is needed when suffering is present.

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope…

Romans 5:1–4 ESV

Suffering actually produces endurance. The more we suffer, the more we endure — or we should. Quitting is always an option. There are ways to numb, avoid and bypass suffering, of course, but it doesn’t lead to anything. If we choose to endure, our character is shaped, and our hope assured.

Hope is the assurance of something not yet experienced — something we can’t see fully. Hope is what drives endurance. Without hope, there’s no reason to keep going.

How do I get more hope? I endure. The more you endure, the more you hope. It’s not a quick-fix formula but a long cycle of steady growth.

I didn’t know I was enduring this year. I thought I was barely hanging on simply moving one step at a time, one day at a time.

When your head is down, you can’t see how far you’ve come.

I couldn’t see my character had grown when I wasn’t responding to negative comments with spewing anger. Or when I wasn’t numbing out at home after a tough work week. Or when I was upholding my boundaries for rest and recharge by saying “no” or “not yet.”

2 Timothy 2:15 says, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed…” The word “approved” means, “one approved after being tested.” Approval is proven through the testing. Character is proven in the suffering.

All the while my character was taking baby steps forward, my hope was slowly growing.

and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Romans 5:5 ESV

We hope because the Spirit has given us hope. God’s love poured out via His Spirit. It’s His presence in us that speaks hope to us.

One of my biggest triggers is looking stupid. If I feel like someone is correcting me or speaking down to me in order to make me feel small, I lose it. (I’m working this out in therapy). So I don’t want to hope for something and it not come to pass. Because then I look stupid.

But this kind of hope is not plucked out of the sky or found on a whim, but it’s the kind of hope instilled in us by the Spirit Himself. He will not put a hope in us that won’t come to pass. He doesn’t try to make us look stupid. He doesn’t want us to feel stupid.

Proven character produces hope that fights shame.

Endurance is needed for the proving. My year of proving is coming to an end, and I need to endure in these last 52 days more than the first 52. But I can endure knowing this time is producing a hope that’s secure — a hope that I’ve been looking for all year.