My Word for 2024: Decision-Making

As many people do, I am picking a word for 2024. The intent of choosing a word for the year is to help a person focus and align their hearts, mind, and soul, as my blogging friend, Bridget, shared in her post on Friday.

I’ve wrestled and prayed over my word for the year for several months now. I could easily pick generosity or creativity to be my word for 2024.

As I’ve shared on this blog, I’ve seen the generosity of God and from the people who love God. In October, I published a series of posts focusing on generosity, starting with my post “Exploring the Generosity of God“.

I could chose creativity as my word because God has ignited the fire of creativity in me that is being expressed through visual art. I’ve written about the important role creativity plays in my life in posts like “Unleashing Your Creativity After 55” and “Unearthing Creative Outlets for Maintaining Mental Wellness.”

In 2023, I took part in a visual arts contest and two group exhibitions. In 2024, I plan to participate in other visual arts competitions and collaborative events, including my first solo exhibition currently scheduled for mid-August 2024.

How does my theology jive with my authenticity? This is actually a topic that my counselor Dr. J and I’ve spent considerable time unpacking.

As a result of these conversations, I seriously considered choosing theology as my word for 2024. What is it that I believe to be true about God after studying God and witnessing the work of God all around me? How does what I believe about God influence and impact my life?

Over the years, I’ve shared with numerous audiences that I think what you believe about God is the most important thing about you. I believe that the upcoming year will test what we believe about God and ourselves. So in a sense, deciding to make theology my banner word for 2024 makes a lot of sense.

Naturally, per my conversations with Dr. J, authenticity is also a word that I could use to focus on in 2024. To be authentic is to to act according to one’s true self and behaving congruently with values and personality. When we think about being authentic, we think about being real and genuine.

While I’ve experienced the generosity of God, I’ve also seen the hard realities of this life. I sometimes feel like I am in a constant state of grief more than I am in a state of joy. This conundrum has impacted and influenced the relationship between my theology–what I believe to be true about God–and how I live authentically in light of the conflict that exists between what I believe to be true and what I’ve experienced in my daily life.

So many potential words, so little time.

So What’s My Word for 2024?

Early this morning, during a conversation with my mom, I realized that my word for 2024 should be decision-making.

Mom and I were talking about a stack of cards and letters she had found in a box last week. After rummaging through the box of notes her mom and her mother-in-law (my Oma and Omi) had written to her after we had moved from Switzerland to the United States, my mom felt sad and regretful for a few days. Mom wondered if we had made the right decision fifty years ago when we left our home and our family to pursue the American Dream.

The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Proverbs 1:7 (NIV)

Interestingly enough, I had spent a good part of the past two days chatting with my old friend Jason (aka Kicks Iron). He and I were reminiscing about our misspent youth. He had been back in East Texas visiting his dad—who was turning 91–and that gave Kicks Iron an opportunity to listen to an old radio station that I once DJ’d at for nearly a decade. He mentioned missing hearing me on the radio and how he thought I should explore getting back into radio because it was really something I excelled at back in the day. This walk back into the “Forest of Long Ago” naturally led me to think back on those days and contemplate what might have been. Terri will tell you that one of the things she admires about me is my eclectic taste in music. That broad taste developed over years of listening to and playing music on the radio. I wondered, “Do I have regrets?”

During our chat, Jason pointed out we can’t change the past, only the future. I shared this wisdom with my mom during our telephone conversation this morning. We can’t undo the past; we can determine our future. We shouldn’t regret the decisions we made then because we made the decision we thought best based on what we knew in that moment. A guy I once worked for liked to say, “I don’t know if I would have decided to do what you did, but then I wasn’t there.”

Listening to my mom this morning as she shared how she had worked through the emotional rollercoaster that these notes, cards, and letters had sent her spiraling on, it became clear to me how important decision-making is to each of our lives. Decision-making has a tremendous impact on the people I minister to daily in my work at a homeless discipleship outreach. My job demands that I make hundreds of decisions every single day. When I’m working on a drawing, I’m faced with making a litany of decisions, yet in a different way than what I do at work.

I learned a long time ago that the only perfect decision-makers are people who don’t make very many –if any–decisions. To make a decision, is to experience life. In America, we enjoy the freedom of making our own decisions rather than having our options dictated to us.

The decisions we make today can alter the course of our life tomorrow.

So in 2024, I will focus on decision-making. Many of the posts I will publish will unpack decisions we make, how we make them, and how decisions differ from choices. This year being an election year, will mean that decision-making will influence much of what we see and hear. It is imperative that we educate and equip ourselves with the right tools and information to make wise decisions.

When you look back on your life, don’t do so with regret. You made the choices and decisions you made at that time with what you knew or believed in that moment.
You lived life. That’s nothing to regret. Rather, it is to be celebrated.

Rainer Bantau

In 2024, we will also discuss authenticity, creativity, and generosity. We will explore what it is to live a life marked with moments of high highs and low lows often occurring within a few heartbeats of each other—if not simultaneously. In this upcoming new year, we will unpack topics like jadedness, post traumatic stress disorder, recovery, and grief—alongside subjects like community, mentoring and discipleship—together. And we’ll explore some music, too.

My 2024 Blogging Goals

My blog is dependent on you the reader and our interaction. I know that there are people in small groups in various places engaging in conversations about posts that I’ve published. Some even use my posts in their group Bible studies, as well as a part of their personal devotional time.

I plan on posting once a week on Sunday nights. Naturally, I may throw in an extra post here and there but in 2024 I want to focus on consistency and content quality. I’d rather post one well written post per week than several short riffs. Besides, my schedule these days makes posting more than once extremely ambitious and highly unlikely–especially during periods of inclement weather.

I hope to continue seeing growth in views, visitors, likes and comments. Three of these categories saw significant percentage increases. Views experienced a growth of 16% while the number of visitors to my blog grew by 25%. While the number of comments on my blogposts were down, the number of likes were up by 128%.

How about you my friend? What are your blogging goals for 2024? Did you choose a word that will be the focal point for the year ahead?

What Music Are You Listening to as 2023 Draws to a Close?

This morning, I listened to a little Burt Bacharach. However, most of this week my ears have been tuned to music gathered from French cafes, restaurants, and pubs via an Apple Music playlist called French Cafe’ Lounge curated by PMB Music, a group that curates themed listening experiences. There’s something about the feel and rhythm that I like about the music featured on this particular playlist. Of course, it features an eclectic blend of songs culled from a smörgåsbord of genres. Today, I’m exploring PMB’s playlist Vintage Cafe‘. What I enjoy about these playlists is that it introduces me to artists I haven’t heard before, like The Cooltrane Quartet and the Stella Starlight Trio. The playlists have a snappy, jazzy beat.

In Closing

When you look back on your life, don’t do so with regret. You made the choices and decisions you made at that time with what you knew or believed in that moment. You lived life. That’s nothing to regret. Rather, it is to be celebrated.

I pray that as you reflect back on 2023, that you see the beauty of what God did in your life and that you aren’t overwhelmed by the darker moments you experienced as you lived your best life.

Looking ahead to 2024, my prayer is that the Lord would bless you abundantly and that you would live your life to the fullest. I believe when you use everything God gives you then you are truly worshipping Him with your every breath. What a beautiful thing that is…

Love, joy, and peace, and

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Rainer Bantau —The Devotional Guy™