The Year Before / The Year Ahead

My sister, Amanda, babysat for us on Saturday, and later that day we had some time to visit and I loved it because life is busy and visiting doesn't happen as often as it should. 

With the sudden swath of cold this weekend along with the welcome arrival of fall treats, pumpkin beverages advertised and gourds on display, I felt sentimental about the way a year can sneak up on us and flash us memories of the springs, summers, falls, and winters of past.

Every once in a while I will take a moment to think about all my hopes, fears, struggles, plans, and joys that I was walking with in that season a year previous. I'm always truly amazed at how much time had in store for me that I couldn't have imagined no matter how much effort I put forth in planning or anticipation.

So, I asked Amanda, "Where were you a year ago?"

Amanda and I swapped our perspectives for where we were at last September: what we were feeling at the time, what lay ahead on our path we didn't know about, and maybe that "thing" at the time that felt heavy like it would always would be clinging, dragging. And of course, a year later we know better. As the story usually goes, all of us are stronger, smarter, and more adaptable than we give ourselves credit, and God showers us with enough grace to ruin so many heavy things in the most beautiful way.

Amanda took the question and added a bonus: "What advice would you give yourself a year ago?" 

I could think of very specific things for myself about not feeling pressure to meet up with moms for play dates or the importance of carving out time differently for myself and for time with Paul, but mostly I thought about one word: gentle.  I wish I would have been gentle with myself and others especially when things were difficult. When I felt lonely through Paul's absence or when I was really, really having a tough time with adjusting to life with 3 kids and being at home all the time. I see that I pushed myself & that was great and so helpful because through a lot of work, I've taught myself so many things this past year. However, I wish that in the process I would have been more kind to myself and others. Just a thought. Hopefully, that bent of being harsh wears down like a rock embedded in rushing water and I learn as I age to love lightly even when I'm doing hard things.

With the perspective of "one year since ___________", I can remember difficult things (like taking two babies without bucket seats and a four year old in this awful cold and snow on the ground and insane wind to Chic-Fil-A because Paul had been gone what felt like forever and I was desperate to do anything away from the house and how I cursed the crazy long winter and then Thomas got food poisoning and was losing things out both ends at 4 in the morning and wow, that was just a blast), but it's all the little daily joys that really shine and sparkle the most.

I feel like I've lived a whole life at home in just a year and a half of terribly unpredictable joys that I can't begin to describe or relay but I lived them. I lived them & that matters. I showed up & was present & I felt joy pierce my heaviness over and over and over again. Every naked toddler butt walking away from me. Every kooky question Thomas asks. Every little smile and bit of love these kids showered over me. Every single time Thomas and I snuggled under my covers and read. Especially that time he laughed so crazy over The BFG and asked me to reread parts over and over again and I thought he might just wet himself on the couch.  Those are the things that, if I had known them, I would have realized I was working toward and striving for much more than solving my problems, that I'm waking up to bust my butt, so I can make space for enjoying all the people I know and love and so we can dance in the margins.

This morning I woke to write a post about the twins being 15 months old. I was looking through my old posts and found this photo of Alistair & Emerick's baptism a little more than just a year ago:

And just how crazy is this for perspective? Here Andrea and Josh hold our boys but with their own narratives at the time, their own lives very much separate and foreign to being parents and now they hold their own boys in their arms and probably find themselves very much in tune with how much their lives have changed in the most unexpected and beautiful way in just one simple year.

Ah, just too much awesome for me to grasp.

All this is just to say, with September often referred to as the other new year and fall pressing itself on us, I'm ready and my heart is happy for another year of a lot more of all kinds of things-- a full, rich life where the surprises and the triumphs and the joys far outweigh and outshine and outstretch any measure of heavy we feel temporarily.

To another year!