two four

Tomorrow is my birthday. Last year, I had a theory. 23 was going to be my year. The one where I figured it out all. The one I would look back on and remember as the year that changed me - the year it all came together. You guys! What the hell was I thinking?! Your first year as a mother isn't spent figuring it all out! It's spent guessing and failing and trying and learning and adapting. It's not the year you come together, it's the year you fall apart. It's not the year you find it all, it's the year you lose it. Now, I have very few complaints for my 23rd year. God tested my patience and my strength, yes, and this last year held some of my hardest and most challenging days as a mother, a wife, and a woman in her early twenties that doesn't really feel like she should be called a woman. But, it also held some of my very best days. My happiest, funniest, most loved, precious, you can feel it deep in your bones, truly joyous days. 23 was a good year. Maybe it wasn't "my year", but maybe I won't have just one year. Maybe each year serves it's own purpose - each year we figure something out, not all of it, but something. Maybe that's why we keep having years and birthdays and new seasons and Mondays - we are given ample opportunity to start over. To fail, and then try again. To learn and to change. To grow and adapt. I did figure that out. And 23 did change me. It molded me and shaped me and cut me down and built me back up. 23 will be a year I remember, with absolute certainty. 23 was the year I figured out, and accepted, that I will never figure it all out.