on turning twenty-six

I think it was the SAT where I read a poem about aging that has really stuck with me. The little girl uses buttons in a tin can to symbolize the years of one's life. We collect our years, full of experiences and memories that stay in our "can" all our lives. So even though I may have turned 26 last week, I'm still carrying 25 buttons in my can.

I feel like I aged a lot this year; certainly more so than the year before. So many of my friends dreaded 25. The "quarter-life-crisis." But not me, it was just another year. This year was somehow different. I added many a memory to by button tin, and I can't seem to leave them behind. 

"Trust in God's Timing." This is all I wrote on the first page of my annual journal. I was pregnant, sooner than I'd expected to be, but with a babe I had long prayed for. I worried that V would resent me for cutting her only-child time short, that I'd be too overwhelmed with V to be a good newborn mom again. I wanted to run a marathon, but was put on partial bed-rest earlier that week and less than a month before my half-marathon race. I worried that I couldn't keep little baby inside long enough to survive or thrive. I prayed a lot. Over the next few months, my fears grew tiny and my anxiety disappeared. I grew to truly trust the Lord to carry us through. And He did. Now He is seeing me through PPD, balancing babes, planning to move back to Houston. I never want to leave 25 and all it brought me. I hope to carry it with me.

.....

I am now 26, and it is time to set new goals. My word for the year is steadfast. I want to run 26 miles, my first full marathon. I want to read God's word cover to cover. I want to be rejected 26 times. I want to read 26 books.

Last week I ran a half marathon (whoop!!), I downloaded an app, I agreed to a collaboration (the opposite of a rejection), and I ordered two books. 

Cheers to 26, and keeping up the hard work, the good work.