It’s 2019 and my word of the year is Pursue. And that scares me a bit, because my 2018 word of the year ended up meaning a lot more than I intended when the year started out with confetti poppers and fresh powersheets goals. Now that 2018 is in the past, I wanted to share all of that with you.
I chose the word 'Season’ for 2018 for a couple of reasons. I wanted to say yes to the things that were right for us right now and give myself permission to change as soon as something stopped working for us. I wanted to think short term and focus on one step at a time instead of putting pressure on myself to think long term. As a mom to a 1 year old, I’d figured out that Darcy’s schedule would change every 3-4 months and all of a sudden what had been working for us would stop working. We’d have to throw our entire routine out the window and piece by piece, create a new schedule that would work for us in this new season. Type A Caitlin likes a good routine, so I chose the word Season to encourage me to embrace these changes and be flexible until we found a new rhythm.
Those are the seasons that I expected for 2018. But we experienced some BIG unexpected seasons throughout the year.
Ryan’s job - Ryan moved to work for another business under the same company umbrella early in the year. Then in the summer, his roll changed again. And in December, he accepted a job with another company in the business intelligence field. None of these changes were expected, and each was an exciting new opportunity.
Our house - We always knew the little yellow house wasn’t our forever home, but we weren’t growing out of it yet. At first we just wanted to finish up our projects and figure out what we’d be looking for in our next house. Then we started looking at houses, and we were surprised that what we were looking for was actually in our price range. So we decided to put our little yellow house on the market. And it sold immediately. It was so clear that God wanted us to move. But as we shared last year, every step after that one was very unclear. The house BUYING process was really hard and filled with a lot of second-guessing and back tracking. God gave us winter before the spring in a very real way. There were so many moments that one of us wanted to walk away from the short sale. It often felt like the wrong decision, and we had no idea if we’d ever receive an answer. Finally unlocking the door to our new home was a moment of such relief and joy.
Throughout 2018, we were continually shifting from one season to another in our home, in our work, with Darcy, and with the actual seasons. We grew and adjusted, and at the end of the year, we were so grateful for each of those seasons and where they brought us. So when God put the word Pursue on my heart for this year, I really wanted to pick something else. Pursue sounds so active… so exhausting…. But I am also excited to see how much GROWTH will come from a word like Pursue. Let’s do this, 2019!
