All, This Year

Last January was the first time I named my year.
I chose the word grace.
It easily applied to whatever I did.
It guided me through many new experiences.
How should I go about anything and everything?
With grace.

I enjoyed having this word.
I knew I wanted to name my year again.
As 2011 drew to a close, I began to think and pray about a new word.
The one that came to my mind was all.

I wondered about it.
All is very different from grace.
It is much harder to define.
It was not something I wanted to be.
Yet I continued to hear it.
Hear it until I knew.

All. 

My word for the year is all.
I am curious about what it will come to mean to me.
Until then I will have to simply give it my all.

If you chose a word for this year, I would love to hear it. Blessings~ Megan

Painting the Last Week of 2011 With Grace

Another week, one full of celebrations, has been painted.

This means I now have fifty-two calendar paintings. 

This means I really and truly made it through the whole year. 

The pages are in chronological order in a notebook, but they are by no means orderly.

The corners curl.

The sizes vary. 

The paintings vary.

Some look better than others. 

This was an experiment. 

An imperfect attempt at combining art and time. 

Still, I knew it would be this way. 

The surprise was how much grace, my word for 2011, fit into the picture. 

Grace through curling corners.

Grace through varying sizes.

Grace through varying paintings.

Grace through messy.

This last painting was one of a few that I had to enlist the help of scrap paper and glue to cover up mistaken dates. It took effort to put Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in their proper places.   

Ironic how grace does the same thing. 

Covering up imperfections.

Smoothing over mistakes. 

Giving another chance. 

Of course, grace does that seamlessly, unlike my paper and glue. 

Maybe that is why grace is so amazing. 

For history I recently read about Jonathan Edwards
(a preacher, theologian, and missionary, though not a painter as far as I know.)

He was quoted as saying "Grace is but glory begun, and glory is but grace perfected."
I wrote this down, seeing only the word grace.

Now, as I look forward to 2012, I appreciate the thought behind it.

I have thoroughly enjoyed this year of grace and painted weeks.
But this new year is full of new, wonderful possibilities.
I have new projects in mind.
I have a new word to share.
And there is more glory to find along the way.

Blessings to you~ Megan

Naming a Year

It started one week ago.  I couldn't quite figure it out.  Why name a year?  And yet, there it was.  I first heard about through my Mom, who had named the year for the first time.  My Mom had heard about it here.  I could recognize the beauty in it, but was still far from actually naming a year myself.  

Then I was seeing it.  More people I knew were choosing names for 2011.  Over and over I found myself inspired.  I would read a word and taste its sweetness.  However, I would think, even if I did name the year, I couldn't choose just one name. 

 Then, during the minutes transitioning from the full day to my sleep, I understood.  I realized my word.

I knew my word for the year is grace.      

It had been showing up in all sorts of places.  


Before Christmas and my birthday I had puzzled over the idea of growing gracefully.

Doing ballet, I have worked hard to dance with grace.

Believing in Jesus, I have been enveloped in grace.    

Christmas morning came and what did I receive?  A necklace (made by a friend who also named  her year) with words on it picked for me by my Mom.   

always grace.

Let go of perfection.  Always grace. 

I still haven't completely figured it out.  I simply see that for me, this year is a year of grace.  ~Megan

 

If you too are naming your year, please share!