my baby, aka the fetus in this picture is turning FIVE this week!
seriously! five?
it's like two seconds ago and yet, ya can't quite possibly imagine life before her either.
oh, how i love my energetic, creative, hilarious, sweet olivia.
she's always been a reminder of hope to me.
she goes to kinder in the fall.
she'll catch the bus across the street around 7am
& i'll have my days to do things i don't manage to get done now.
like, clean my house, for example.
respond to emails. go to the gym before jimmy fallon is on. hear myself think.
you know, those things.
peeps ask,
"what will you do with yourself?!"
"will you go back to school?"
"work more hours?"
or they'll tell me,
"time for another!"
truth is, i have no idea how to respond.
i run the gamut of being super stressed out about my lack of a ten year/ten month/ten day plan,
and also kinda loving the delicious ambiguity of it all.
{depends on the moment}
sometimes it's hard to know what is best or possible or worth risking for.
sometimes i can't decide what my dreams are.
sometimes you don't have all that much control, and it's hard.
sometimes prayers are answered in weird ways, and it's only in hindsight that you view them as a kind mercy/blessing.
sometimes decisions are deeply personal.
sometimes it's hard to know what to pray for.
one of my very in tune young women at church unknowingly inspired me today.
she reminded me that life is about submitting our will to god.
putting our trust in christ... always remembering that he has thought all my thoughts, felt all my feelings.
"he knows my fears, and my frustrations - and what i can become through faith in him."
i am humbled.
he is my perfect example. ♥
"Christ knows better than all others that the trials of life can be very deep and we are not shallow people if we struggle with them...No one’s eyes were more penetrating than His, and much of what He saw pierced His heart. Surely His ears heard every cry of distress, every sound of want and despair. To a degree far more than we will ever understand, He was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” Indeed, to the layman in the streets of Judea, Christ’s career must have seemed a failure, a tragedy, a good man totally overwhelmed by the evils surrounding Him and the misdeeds of others. He was misunderstood or misrepresented, even hated from the beginning. No matter what He said or did, His statements were twisted, His actions suspected, His motives impugned. In the entire history of the world no one has ever loved so purely or served so selflessly—and been treated so diabolically for His effort. Yet nothing could break His faith in His Father’s plan or His Father’s promises. Even in those darkest hours at Gethsemane and Calvary, He pressed on, continuing to trust in the very God whom He momentarily feared had forsaken Him. Because Christ’s eyes were unfailingly fixed on the future, He could endure all that was required of Him, suffer as no man can suffer except it be “unto death,” as King Benjamin said, look upon the wreckage of individual lives and the promises of ancient Israel lying in ruins around Him and still say then and now, “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." -Jeffrey R. Holland
