Flourish

According to Merriam-Webster, flourish means to grow luxuriantly; thrive.

A lot of people have their word of the year and I decided to be one of those people. Not to just jump on the band wagon or do it because everyone else is doing it but I’m doing it for myself and for God.

I decided that my word of the year is “Flourish”.

As a lot of you know, even thought I haven’t made a blog post about this yet…but do stay tuned for it, 2023 was rough towards the last ¼ of it. August through the beginning of November was HARD and Kane and I went through a lot. I’ll give you a quick run-down to catch you up to speed.

August 13th I went into the emergency room at about 4:30 in the morning. I thought I was experiencing a cyst that burst on my ovaries (thought that because I have PCOS and it’s common). The doctors did an ultrasound to see if anything abnormal came up. Obviously the tech couldn’t tell me anything while she was doing it. I just remembered how much pain I was in while she was doing it. While waiting after my ultrasound for the doctors to tell me what was going on, they needed a urine sample to test for pregnancy. I’m thinking the whole time “Ha, OK, it’s going to be negative because I can’t ovulate on my own, I’m not on meds at the moment to help me ovulate, so this is impossible if it comes back positive.” Sure enough, positive. Bad news—I was experiencing ANOTHER ectopic pregnancy and needed to get into surgery soon. My surgeon said she would TRY to save my right tube (only tube that I had left), but the looks of it wasn’t very good.

Result—my tube ruptured and they had to remove it. Which left me with no more fallopian tubes. Which means if Kane and I want children, we cannot conceive naturally and would have to do IVF.

The ectopic pregnancy surgery was so bad that they couldn’t do it laparoscopicaly and had to make a c-section-like incision. I had 18 staples that got removed later that week…then it got infected somehow. That is a whole other story. I had to go to wound-care, go to the infusion center to get it cleaned out every day, which turned out to having a wound vac for 2 weeks, then only having to get it cleaned out every other day, to my incision being fully closed and healed. It was a rough month or so with that.

And then with the holidays without a positive pregnancy test, a baby bump, or a child in our arms, was pretty hard and sad.

I want 2024 to be a year where I grow from this. To thrive. To know how good our God is and will continue to be. I know He’s good and sometimes it’s hard to see that in the midst of my storms, transitions, trials, mistakes, etc., but He REALLY IS!

 Psalm 92:13 says, “They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God.” We are rooted in God. We grow and prosper.

 James 1:10-12 says, “and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love Him.” I will experience many trials, mistakes, situations, unknowns, and transitions in my life. This is to be expected because the enemy will try and attack me and pull me away from God.

Flourishing means clinging to God’s promises for my life in the good and bad times. Flourishing doesn’t mean putting on a facade and pretending that everything is fine when it really isn’t.

Flourishing is God’s desire for me to be a strong, bold and engaging woman of faith.

This isn’t going to happen overnight and I don’t expect it to.

A habit that I want to develop for this year is to be gentle and kind to myself. None of this was my fault…and I never said or thought it was my fault, nor will I ever. I was praying to God for several months before this all happened asking Him to guide me and to lead me into what we should do next in our fertility journey. Whether that looked like more ovulation medication, going into IUI or going straight into IVF. He answered my prayers…just not in the way that I thought He would. And that’s alright. Do I think I deserved going through all of these trials and storms? No, not at all. But God was protecting me from something and putting me in a better position for His plan.

This year, I will learn to thrive, to grow and to FLOURISH from this situation. I will learn to be gentle with myself and to trust God more with His plan because it’s way bigger than I could ever imagine.

What is your word for 2024?