2009 Word-of-the-Year: REJOICE

Note: December is Word-of-the-Year Month at Christine’s Blog. As we roll into another New Year, each day will feature a new guest author who chose one word as a way of setting intention for her whole year. Today’s guest is Stacey Curnow. More about Stacey below.

Last December, as I contemplated my word for 2009, I was listening to a playlist I created of over 100 Christmas songs. They played on a continuous shuffle all day long.

The shuffle was random but I was certain that Wynonna Judd’s “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” with the chorus “Rejoice! Rejoice!” played more frequently than any other song  – or else I was simply more tuned into it. In either case it seemed that the word “rejoice” had chosen to impress itself on my consciousness.

I knew, of course, what “rejoice” meant. But I figured it wouldn’t hurt to look it up in the dictionary anyway. There I learned that rejoice means to “feel great joy” and “be glad” and “take delight” and “celebrate in some event” and “cause great joy to.” I decided to explore each of these meanings over the year by committing to write a blog post about it each Sunday.

I am happy to report that I wrote every week over the whole year except for two. (For the missing two posts it was not that I found myself with too little to rejoice in, but too much! There simply wasn’t time.)

In writing this guest post I went back and looked at some of my “rejoice” posts, and it was truly delightful to realize that I had captured so many joyful moments over the year.

I’ve always appreciated as much about my life as I possibly could. But here’s the thing: Choosing this word seemed to call me to play a bigger game. It was as if it said “Oh, you think your life’s so great? Well, much of it (genetics, culture, socio-economic status) was determined for you. What are you going to do to make it truly great?”

Appreciating my life created contrast, too. I saw so many women having a hard time appreciating their lives. I wanted to help them see how amazing their lives were, how amazing they were. And for those who couldn’t find anything to appreciate about the life they were currently living, I wanted them to realize they had the ability to create the exact life they wanted.

I was inspired to carve out something of my very own, something I had never done before, something risky. I decided to start a business and 6 months ago I launched my life coaching practice, Midwife for Your Life.

A year ago I would have claimed that I didn’t have an entrepreneurial bone in my body. And I wouldn’t have imagined that I had the ability to do it. It has certainly been the greatest self-imposed challenge of my life.

All I can say is I have indeed learned that it is easy to rejoice when everything is going my way, but not so when problems arise no matter how hard I work, when clients are not banging down my door, and even worse, don’t seem to appreciate me and the service I offer.

I have learned that I would rather show up and play bigger, even when it feels uncomfortable (and let me tell you, it’s so much more comfortable to sit in my lovely home with my sweet family and count my blessings).

I have learned that I can do things imperfectly and still accomplish a lot, and even better, derive great joy from it – much more than I ever would have if I had decided to value comfort over a dream.

I have learned that I would rather stretch and grow as I reach for the dream. I want to live each day doing the “hard” thing, testing my mettle and knowing the world benefited from it. And that has been the source of much rejoicing.

——————

Stacey works as a certified nurse-midwife in North Carolina, and over more than 15 years her career has taken her from western Indian reservations to a center-city Bronx hospital to the mountains of southwestern Mexico.

She has been an enthusiastic student of positive psychology for years and applies it to her midwifery and life coaching practices with great success.

She lives in Asheville, NC with her husband, young son, and Ruby the Wonder Chicken. She blogs at www.staceycurnow.com/blog.

Tagged as: christine kane, new years resolutions, stacey curnow, word-of-the-year

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