I’ve been on a mission this past year. A twisting and turning quest of sorts.

I’ve been scouring the corners of my life and re-imagining the ordinary, normal details that make up my every day. The mundane, the simple, the often overlooked. That is usually where, I’ve discovered, delight lives.

I’ve never been one to have a “word of the year.” The practice of confidently proclaiming a word over their year on January 1.

Goals, hopes, dreams, shiny and sparkly resolutions—yes. A word to serve as a banner under which I live my life for the next year? No. If you are one of the “word of the year” people, I applaud you. Because I am now one of you.

A few weeks in 2022, I was listening to a sermon about Psalm 37, and the word delight in verse four nearly jumped out and shook me to my core. I can’t quite describe it, but I knew right then and there on my sofa (hello, online church) the Lord was inviting me to explore this most lovely, surprising collection of letters over the next year: delight.

Hmm.

I rolled the word over in my mind, again and again, as if inspecting a rare gem in my hand. Over and over and over again. Delight. 

What a fun word. After 11 months of hanging around it, I can confirm it is, indeed, fun.

But it’s also much more than that. It’s much deeper, holier, and more spiritual. It’s a gift from God. He delights in us, after all. And He’s given us many good gifts to delight in, too.

Delight has transformed my life. It has completely and utterly awakened the stagnant, cynical thoughts, perspectives, and ideals within and repurposed them into lively, grateful, joyful beams of light. I stopped looking around at what others had or what they were doing and simply started liking my life—where I was at, what, and who was around me. Not everything changed at once, but my quality of life sure did. (I got this idea of “liking my life” from an Internet friend Caroline Lunne. Catch more insight from her here.)

Let me be clear—liking my life didn’t happen because a million things changed or gold-coated blessings rained down on me, but rather, amid daily, simple, ordinary life, I noticed a million delightful things happening around me.

The heavenly scent of coffee first thing in the morning. 

The streaks of light shining through my window at 3 p.m. 

The way three shades of violet melted together in the sky on my drive home from work. 

The song “Our House” playing as I shop at Trader Joe’s. 

The text from a friend I haven’t heard from in a while. 

The just-because gift from someone I love. 

The anticipation and excitement of starting a new journal. 

The smile from the barista on a tough day.

The hug that lasts just a few seconds longer.

The sight of dear friends sitting around my kitchen table. 

These snippets of beauty had always been there. This was just the first time I acknowledged and called them what they were—delightful. They were little moments where I felt like I was the only one who noticed such a splendid detail that it seemed like God had handcrafted it just for me, at that exact time and place.

Here are a few things I’ve learned about delight, and I invite you to get up close and personal with this lovely concept, too. I hope I never stop learning about and practicing it—it’s a game changer.

• Delight is a practice. To soak it in—or even see it—we must practice it. To enjoy it, hold it close, and appreciate it all our days, we must play an active role. How? Jotting down the delightful things I experienced in a notebook or the Notes app, plus snapping a picture of any delightful moment I could, worked best for me. That way I was acknowledging the delight and had a catalog of the goodness God shared with me.

• We have to seek out delight. It can appear in obvious, magnificent ways, but more often than not, it’s hidden in the mundane, softer moments. And that makes it that much more rewarding and beautiful to notice it.

• The more we seek it, the more we see it. We can train ourselves to notice the beauty around us. This shift in perspective is what really helped shift the quality of my life.

• Delight never stops. It never disappears, no matter what we think, feel, or see. It’s there. Always. Our finite, ever-shifting humanity will ebb and flow, shifting our perspective right along with it. Which is what leads me to my next discovery.

• Delight is not something we can conjure up. It’s a gift from God. It’s discovering a hundred little gifts throughout that He’s given us every single day, and there’s nothing sweeter than that.

• Delight is relational. It always points me back to God. It always makes me say to Him, “Thank you for this split second that makes me like you and my life that much more.”

• God is the ultimate delight. He is the creme de la creme, the best of the best. All other delight points us to Him and His goodness. Delighting in Him is what truly fills and satisfies our thirsty souls.

• Delight requires us to slow down. We can’t quickly pass by something and expect to experience delight. Delight requires us to pause, recognize the goodness before us, and thank the Lord.

• Delight and abundance are sisters. The more I’ve delighted in the day-to-day things happening around me, the more lively, abundant, and full my life has felt. It’s John 10:10 come true.

• Delight is not something for some of us. It’s for all. It’s an invitation for every last one of us to experience God and our lives in a new way. It’s not just for the people who seem to have it all together or have a beautifully curated image online. It’s for you and me in our living rooms and kitchens when no one else can see. It’s there.