Use Your Words

I just made a "Wordle" creation.  For those of you not familiar with Wordle, it's an online tool that lets you put in text, and it generates an image with the most commonly used words in that text.  The more often a word is used, the more prominent it appears in the image.  I typed my blog address, and it came up with the following image with the words it found on my site:  

 

(My apologizes that this image is tough to see; I haven’t yet figure out how to get it from Wordle in a larger or clearer way)  

I'm fairly certain it was only able to use the most recent blog postings, but nonetheless I was pleasantly pleased to see that "family" is the most dominant word in my Wordle.  Family is important to me - my family of origin, new nuclear family, extended family.  Although I spend 40 hours a week or more at my job, I spend about 168 hours a week thinking and caring about my family in one way or another.  So it certainly deserves the big, bold spot.  And it’s no surprise that it would be a word I would write about most often here on this blog about me and my life, since family is a huge part of me and my life.  

But what surprised me was the lack of certain other words.  When I think about who I consider myself to be, and what I consider important in my life, there are certain words that come to mind.  Family is one of them, but others too, others that didn’t all appear on my Wordle.  Love, pray and journey were there and large.  Those words certainly speak to my spirit.  But where was Jesus or Christ or Christian?  God was only ‘medium’ size, and where was Spirit?  Why were holy and beautiful so tiny?  I didn’t see vocation or wife, and mother seems to barely have made it.  There was no peace or justice or servant or community.  I didn’t mention ministry or church.  Grateful and joy are small, along with hope and trust.  I missed my hobbies – theatre, movies, poetry, music, cheese.  There was no siblings or laughter or friends or silliness.  Yet those are all words that define who I long to be and how I long to live.  So why weren’t they more prominent on my Wordle?  

Simple; I didn’t write about them enough.  

Wordle has helped me learn an important lesson (a lesson you would have thought I’d know already, considering I tell my son it almost every day) – use your words.  The words we say are important; they do communicate.  And if what I hope to communicate, be it through my life, my conversations or even my blog, isn’t being reflected in the words I use, then I need to reevaluate.  I know the words I need to use to communicate what I want to share (they’re all written in the paragraph above).  I just need to be more deliberate about using them.  I need to be more deliberate about writing about the words above, those that reflect my spirit, and not just the happenstance of life.  

So even though it’s a bit early for new year’s resolutions, I’ve already come up with an idea for one.  Along with that prominent FAMILY word, I’m hoping that next year my blog’s Wordle will include a better reflection of who I desire to be, of me and my spirit.  I hope to do better at using MY words!