Monday, August 4, 2008

The World Goes 'Round and 'Round and 'Round...

My 25th birthday is on Friday. That’s right, it’s on 08/08/08. It’s got to be the coolest birthday ever. But aside from the coolness factor, I’ve been thinking a lot about the significance of it. 25 years old. A quarter of a century. Like I have said before, I have never been the one to dread a birthday or cry about how I’m getting so old. It’s quite the contrary, actually. I have always looked forward to my future, and love my birthday every year. It signifies the passage of time, yes, but it also inspires me to make the best of my future years as well.

That’s definitely the case this year, but I have been thinking about the past a little bit more than I usually do. I have been thinking about how life can change so drastically in a short period of time, but inevitably it comes full circle. When I was 7, my sister was born. In an instant, my world had been turned on its head, but that’s really when my life seemed to start. Sure, I had 7 years before Abbie came into the world, but once I got to hold her in the hospital and look into those blue eyes, those 7 years seemed to disappear. I know I was young, but I think I understood that the little baby I was holding was going to bring so much happiness into my life and into the lives of the people around her that I didn’t really care if I wasn’t going to be the youngest in the family anymore. About 6 years later, when I was 13, I met my best friend, Bonnie. I didn’t know it at the time, but the first day we met at a soccer practice was going to be the day that I look back on with the most gratitude and love anyone could ever have for another person (who isn’t her husband…). Bonnie and I spent the following ten years going through everything two best friends can go through – divorcing parents, high school drama, crying over pints of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, older brother issues, summer birthday trips to Seattle, Oregon, and San Francisco, 4 (or 4 ½ in my case) college years spent in different parts of the state, lazy days by the pool at Sveadal, and riding down the bike path in Pacific Grove on surries. Everything felt like it was rolling along smoothly, then June of last year hit. Bonnie was engaged to be married in September, I had moved to Hawaii to “find myself,” and had just met the man that would later become my husband. In a flurry of 14 months, I got engaged, Bonnie got married, I got married, Aaron was deployed, Bonnie got pregnant, and I moved to the boonies to go to school. More has happened in the last year than has happened in the last 10 years combined…

The main reason I have been thinking so much about the years past is not because my birthday is coming up, but because a much more important day of birth is right around the corner – that of Bonnie and Travis’ new baby girl, Liberty. She will be coming into this crazy world sometime around August 15th, and a month after that, my own baby sister will be off to college. Life keeps going even if you don’t want it to, but it is in that continuous spinning on its axes that you get the most wonderful times and people you will ever experience. Change can be hard, but in the end it’s inevitable, so you might as well welcome it with open arms. I can’t wait until this weekend when I will be home with my family, but there will be one huge thing missing – there has been and will continue to be a hole in my heart that only one person in this entire world can fill – my husband. I would love nothing more than for him to be with me to share my special day, but really I just want him here to share any day with, because every day with him is special. Well, I need to go practice guitar, or else my teacher might kill me on Wednesday. Have a good night!

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