On Life...

One year ago today, I had just found out that I was pregnant---just over seven weeks pregnant, to be exact.  A better title for this blog would be "Living the Unexpected Life."  If you're anything like me, you've probably had moments when you thought you had your life perfectly planned out.  God ALWAYS has other plans for our lives---maybe it's a similar plan, with a different timeline.  Perhaps you thought you knew EXACTLY what you thought you'd be doing at this point in time.  I'm here to tell you---I haven't learned yet that God is the one who is deciding my path, and I'm along for the adventure.  I think there are times when I've started to loosen the reigns, only to try to manipulate them back in my favor.  This past year has been revelatory for me in a number of ways.  I've had friendships end, relationships strengthen, and blinders removed.  What I thought was most certainly a path I'd be following for several years ended up deteriorating very rapidly before me, and along with it, a friendship that caused me many a night of tears, anger, and frustration.  As God has been revealing to me, while I may not always understand it, He will always have my best interests at heart.  He is intentional about the people He is placing in my life---whether it's fleeting or more permanent---and I am learning along the way that there are "heart friends" and there are "surface friends."

Suffice it to say that this blog has never been something with which I've pursued with much consistency; however, something about becoming a mother has really impacted my heart and my head and I'm feeling more and more like I have a lot to say and nowhere to say it.  Well, dear audience, here I am.  I'm certain that some days I'll have more to say than others.  I'll have moments to share, books to review, cakes to reveal, truthful and honest entries about marriage, and life, and everything in between.  Life is messy and exciting, as a new mom.  There are days that I feel as though I could conquer the world, but there are just as many where I just want to cuddle our sweet Dashiell and memorize every single part of him so I don't forget these moments in time.  I have spent many a moment, gazing at that sweet face---but now, I know, that as he is growing and becoming more independent (and napping with some consistency!) I have time to myself.  Time where I can put down, into words, what I'm feeling or thinking.  I'll have the opportunity to share what's happening in my life---a book that resonated with me, a date William and I had, or something exciting Dashiell did for the first time.  And sometimes...there will be days when a sentence is all I have in me.

I tend to use my Instagram account often, to share about the changes in me since I found out I was pregnant last year.  The biggest change is my need to be perfect.  I am far from it, and it's been very freeing---almost as though a heavy burden has been lifted off my shoulders---realizing that I have been trying for years to attain something that wasn't attainable and simply left me feeling exhausted and incomplete.  I think Arianna Huffington says it well:  "The fastest way to break the cycle of perfectionism and become a fearless mother is to give up the idea of doing it perfectly - indeed to embrace uncertainty and imperfection."

I want Dashiell to see me as a fearless mother.  I want for him to see that it's okay to NOT be perfect, that to experience life completely means trying new things.  Making mistakes.  Approaching life with the attitude that anything is possible.  Loving this little boy has changed me in so many ways, ways in which I'd never thought possible.