Year in Review

Every now and then, it is important to reflect on your life a little to see how you're doing in the grand scheme of things...I certainly could never have guessed where life would take me years ago watching my mother desperately trying to scrape the money together for rent every month. I mean, I had some ideas that I'd like to be a rock star for a second before moving on and doing something more permanent and grown up. And I always said I wanted to find a love that was more like a burning ember than a roaring fire, since embers have a way of being warm and cozy a lot longer than roaring fires roar.

So, I became religious, then renounced God, then found spirituality in a whole new light by the time I was 14. I lived through adolescence and lived in technicolor for a good while through college and afterward...I fell in love a million times and made it my favorite pasttime...so addicted to how that heart bursting and heart breaking felt. I got to be almost famous for a second, and toured and recorded with awesome bands, and pushed my limits in every conceivable way. In 1997 I met a boy, and did my best to scare him off, but he wouldn't stop sticking. I railed against being with someone so sane. Would he take the shine out of my ethereal life? Would he help me keep floating away?

But really, at some point, the allure of insanity becomes less and less, and something happens where you start thinking about outcomes and "ever after" and all that. I had the sense to marry someone who wouldn't go away, who won't ever go away, no matter how terrible I am. He sees something good here that I can't see 99% of the time, and that is blessed. Not saying that it's all rainbows all day long, but there is a good bit of substance to work with. And we work, and we work on it. That's what building a life together is.

So, 2009 was a crazy year-exhilarating and exhausting and another piece of my life puzzle. We made a little drop of sunshine, most importantly, whose smile is like heaven breaking open, dropping diamonds everywhere. I fell in love, heart bursting all over again, with a tiny little life that I made with the man who wouldn't walk away (from the impossible kamikaze girl with clouds in her head, no less). Our Gillian, on the other hand, has tried us more than anything ever has; and we love her and we are wasted by her every second. No one had ever mentioned how boundary testing (in TODDLERS) is one of the greatest challenges of parenting. But I would never wish her to be anything except exactly what she is. It wouldn't suit me to have a docile lamb where I have a fiercely independent, imaginative, stubborn, willful girl. I don't want to break the spirit I admire and am in awe of, and I don't believe I could even if that was my aim. She's like bamboo. Bending but never broken, and all that.

I think about how the shifts and leaps and wild changes and accomplishments of the past few years, and I am so humbled that God entrusted me, ME, with these blessings. Most nights right before I sleep I meditate on these things so I can remember how I never thought I would be at THIS place. This little life of mine is so much bigger than I could have ever dared to hope for. I have a wonderful family and excellent friends, I have a career I love, an education I am proud of, and life experiences I cherish. Remembering where I came from puts everything in perspective, and I don't want for much different than I have.

I'll be drinking champagne with my husband tonight, hoping for more of this trajectory. Daring to believe into existence the blessings of a happy home, a happy career, and a lovely life. Maybe even dancing to that one song in our living room by the magical lights of our Christmas tree.

Happy New Year to all of you that we love, and to those of you who we have never met.