word for 2009 :thrive:

i have been praying for a word for 2009 the past month. a few weeks ago my blogger friend, the onion boy, owen had surgery and i checked up on him on facebook and saw his signature word :thrive: there. i thought "oh that's such a beautiful word - maybe that could be my word for this year"... then that little critical voice in my head said "oh sure, pick a nice, easy word - who doesn't want to thrive? isn't that a bit selfish of a word for the year? maybe your word should have something to do with hard work instead of something easy?" ah the critical voice, so painful and crushing, eh?

so i set the word aside waiting for another. it kept circling back in my thoughts. thrive... thrive... i really liked it, but again it felt selfish.

another facebook friend had posted that she was thinking about her word for the year in her update and i commented that thrive was whirling through my head, but i hadn't really had enough confirmation to pick it yet. after posting that i sat down with the novel i am reading "The Bean Trees" by Barbara Kingsolver and came upon the chapter where she takes Turtle to the doctor - the term "failure to thrive" appeared 3x in that chapter. it was enough of a confirmation that this was the word, failing another pressing itself into my world, for 2009.

we stayed home and played hooky from church today. i had purchased liam 'praying in color' for christmas and we took time today to make art and pray in color as a family. it was a beautiful time.

this has been a season of loss in my family. one of my cousins dropped dead of a massive heart attack last week, and another is struggling for life in the hospital as i type (unless he passed mercifully last night). both are/were only 50ish. neither had shown any signs of sickness. my art page had the name of my cousin and his mom (my favorite aunt) and images surrounding their names that were meaningful to me.

after we finished our pieces i was still feeling artsy (and liam had included his possible word for 2009 on his art) so i thought to make a page featuring "thrive". i got a bit stumped on the art front and headed toward the word front and looked up THRIVE at thesaurus.com:

Main Entry: thrive

Part of Speech: verb

Definition: do well

Synonyms: advance, arrive, batten, bear fruit, bloom, blossom, boom, burgeon, develop, flourish, get ahead*, get fat, get on*, get places, get there, grow, grow rich, increase, make a go, mushroom*, progress, prosper, radiate, rise, score*, shine, shoot up, succeed, turn out well, wax

Antonyms: decline, fail, languish, lose

(the "get fat" one made me laugh out loud! i plan on that being only a metaphor for the fatness of my soul!)

these past years have been about establishing a good root system that can sustain this "thriving" - maybe this year can be about what grows from that?

thank you owen - i hope you don't mind me borrowing your word! :D

image source