In life there are many checkpoints. Times when you find yourself taking a pause from the race you feel as if you're running, going through the motions, just truing to make it through each day. Times when you're relieved and amazed at how far you've come and how much you've achieved, while feeling overwhelmed and apprehensive at the same time for what you have yet to do.
The middle of the year is one of those touchstones. How have I lived through six whole months of 2024? Six months I'll never get back out of a year that will never come to pass again. That will stand still, frozen in the memories of history forever, never to be touched or altered again.
This year has not gone as I planned. Of course, my expectations for every year vary from the reality each time, but 2024 feels different. A deviation that has me feeling unsure of where to go from here. What do I do with the rest of the time I have to make the most of what the rest of the summer, fall, and beginning of winter could bring?
Nothing bad has happened. Nothing catastrophic or traumatic, which I am grateful for. Just big life changes that have pulled me off course from what I thought my goals were.
I wanted this to be the year when I would take control again of what I want my life to look like. I would read more and write more. I would push myself out of my comfort zone and do things that scare me. I would be a better homemaker, tackling house projects that have been put on hold since the baby was born.
But then I found out I was pregnant again, and the ideal timeline I had set in my mind immediately closed in around me, suffocating. Paralyzing.
I decided to step down from my job, forcing my husband and I to rethink our priorities with finances, and challenging my own flawed sense of security in having a second income.
Even the books I have been picking up have been disappointments, most of them ending up in the category of 3-star reads. Not terrible, but nothing that has overwhelmed me in a positive or negative way. Nothing I would call a new favorite of all time.
I also have yet to sit down with my manuscript again, always too tired at the end of the day to even think about finding the words to tell the story that's still waiting dormant in my heart.
And now that it is somehow the mid way point of the year, a part of me is tempted to write off the second half. As if it means nothing to me but preparing for a second baby and surviving. To give up and try again when I feel like I have control over my life again.
However, I'm refusing to let that thinking take over the next six months. I'm making my new goal for 2024 to not be tempted by the prospect of giving up, even though it feels so easy. To see the blessing in the new course that has been set, and enjoy every minute of it. Trusting God. Making memories with my little growing family. Finding a new favorite book. Writing imperfect words. Refocusing my desires and my heart on what is in front of me.
That's what this year means to me now.
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