Ten years ago, I was finishing up the interior design degree I was sure I wanted, at a university smack-dab in the middle of Iowa
I was engaged and had a date set (for the following October), a dress picked out (in a beautiful champagne color), and a groom that lived a state away (smack-dab in the middle of Madison, Wisconsin).
I had recently switched churches and found myself loving some parts of my newfound “non-denominational” surroundings: the amazing music, the free-flowing prayer, the coffee! in! church! And found myself questioning other things: the pressure to evangelize, the idea that some were “in” while others were “out”, the way “submission” was taught.
I knew I was on the precipice of something big: mere months away from college graduation, a few more until I was married, a move to join Tyson in Madison. I was on the edge of the future and I knew it, full of outlines but with nothing yet colored in.
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In some ways, this year, 2019, was a culmination of this entire decade, of coming into myself. I hear that happens in your thirties. (I hear it happens even more in your forties and look forward to losing the rest of my f***s in the next decade.)
I spent half this decade in the design world in some capacity; first finishing up a degree, then graduating into a recession, desperate for a job. I found a job, 70+ resumes later (thanks, recession). I lost that job (thanks again, recession), and found another. I discovered some things I loved about interior design as a career and others not so much.
Then I found out I was pregnant with twins and chose to put that path on hold.
That’s when I found writing again. Those early days of blogging when the babies were sleeping - it could have been 2 pm or 2 am, it didn’t really matter. I discovered reading again, too, and lost myself in words; something I’d done voraciously as a child but had shoved to the side while I instead pulled all-nighters to pursue a design degree. I took a year-long creativity course and began to pursue writing seriously, as a craft, as a potential career even, whatever that might mean. And through this I found the most beautiful group of friends.
Those children came, two of them literally one right after the other, the third not far behind, and I spent my days covered in milk and spit-up and spilled Cheerios and we headed to parks and playdates and Target and everything revolved around naptime.
The 2016 election happened and I began to question even more seriously the religious spaces I found myself in - spent literal entire months at a time where I couldn’t think of anything else. I was lost and flailing, sent spiraling deeper and deeper into the wilderness with books and writers (Sarah Bessey, Jen Hatmaker, Rachel Held Evans, Richard Rohr, Glennon Doyle) as my guides.
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This year, two of those kids started Kindergarten while the third runs off to preschool a few hours a week. There is some time and space now, a little bit, in a way I didn’t have even just a year ago. Tyson and I celebrated nine years of marriage in October and tried to figure out how we’d ended up in a blue house in the suburbs of Minneapolis with two five-year-olds and a three-year-old.
This year, I followed that writing bug all the way into that memoir class I mentioned to Tyson once and he said I should obviously, totally, absolutely take. I sat one morning and clicked “register” and paid the fee which seemed like so much but I took the plunge anyway and found another part of myself.
This year, I dove even deeper into books and theology and clawed my way out from the suffocating religious pit I found myself in. I left that “non-denominational” (read: evangelical) space and we made the switch to an open, affirming, beautiful, welcoming church home. It’s a religious space I’ve never experienced before.
I’ve found my own voice. It’s been there all along, but I didn’t always trust it before. Or, to be more precise, I didn’t know how to get it to speak before, to say and verbalize the true things it had to say. I do now.
I didn’t realize, until I sat down to write this, what a year 2019 has been for me. Where I stepped out, and stepped up, and took charge of my life. In part because the kids are growing just that much older - things are possible in a way they weren’t when naptime and nursing dictated my schedule.
2019, again, feels like I’m again on the precipice of...something. It’s not as obvious from the outside, not as conspicuous as an engagement ring or a full belly, a moving van in front of a house or the wearing of a cap and gown. It’s nothing so straightforward as all that.
It feels almost bigger though, as though it were the year - the first in awhile - where I was really true to myself. It feels like a new beginning. So much of what was fuzzy a decade ago has been detailed out now - into photos and people and full-fledged memories - and here I find myself again, with some blurry-edged outlines just waiting to be colored in.
Image by @phoenixfeatherscalligraphy for C+C, 2019