at the beginning of my 29th year

     

Anderson & I a year ago today. So much has changed for us! 

   

      Last year on this day I turned twenty-eight. Twenty-eight on the twenty-eighth. I had awaited this golden birthday ever since university, when my roommate told me there was even such a thing. At the time of her telling me this, my golden birthday seemed a lifetime away. Now a year has passed from it. 

On my golden birthday I proclaimed the coming year my golden year. And it was. It has been. So much has happened. 

I have become a wife. A mama. Moved into my own home with a screened in porch from my dreams. I’ve come to know God and myself in ways I never have before. There have been many books read and pots of tea consumed. There have been lessons to be learned and at times it has felt like I was Eustuce Scrubb being painfully but lovingly transformed from a dragon back into a human. There have been other moments where I am overwhelmed by the abundance of all these long held hopes fulfilled.

There have been tears and laughter and life being formed, not only in my womb, but in my heart as I walk and grow through these blessings and all the gifts; opportunities to be formed by all I have been given. Gifts of formation into walking in my belovedness, learning my role as a wife, preparing my body and heart for this new life inside me. 

There have been deep valleys and joyous mountaintops. A year where many things I once prayed for have become a reality, all at once, leaving me to navigate all the transitions with as much grace as I can muster but stumbling often in the abundance of it all often. I’ve referred to it as a rainstorm of blessings. Maybe sometimes a hailstorm. It’s been beautiful. It’s been challenging. It’s been humbling. It’s been golden. 

Now I step into my twenty-ninth year. I am only a month away from meeting my daughter face-t0-face. I’ve been married for nearly nine months and pregnant for most of them. There are lessons I have learned in this past year that I want to cling to, habits I want to break and habits I want to begin. There are hopes I have for this year but mostly for this year I want to settle into the beauty of it all, sink my feet deeper into the goodness this year will bring. The formation that will surely happen. 

I am awaiting this coming year, trusting that goodness and mercy shall follow me in it. And there will be delicious goodness I can’t wait to experience. Goodness in the form of my baby’s smell, sitting and drinking cider around a fireplace laughing with loved ones, watching the man I love as he holds our beloved daughter. And goodness will also be found in the form of trials, testing by fire, scales coming off as I step out of the skin of my old self and walk in the newness of life. I will experience things that aren’t good. We all will. That is the reality of this fallen world. But surely there will be goodness to be found somewhere in it.

I’m aware I’m rambling and likely not very succinct, but it’s my birthday so indulge me. I was reading The Spirit of the Disciplines last night and Willard wrote about the origin of the word “life.” His explanation was much more intelligent than the one I am about to give, but essentially he wrote, life is about movement, growth, activity. If this isn’t happening, we must ask, is life happening? Life has happened this past year, friends. Lots of growth and stretching and leaning in. This next year will be the same. And it should be, shouldn’t it? Through the different circumstances, the growing pains, the blessings, the abundance, the easy to find goodness and the much harder to find goodness, we are being refined. We are being formed and  shaped into the child of God we were meant to be through all of it—the abundance of blessings and the growing pains. And isn’t that how it is meant to be while on this pilgrimage towards his Kingdom fully come? And isn’t gold refined through the fire?