Birthdays. They have taken on a whole new meaning for me now that I am a parent and have actually birthed a child. Tomorrow is my 32nd birthday and, honestly, I’m caring more about the fact that my daughter will be two years old at the end of the month. Where has the time gone? For the last few years it seems that my world has been a never ending stream of life changing events. Get married, buy a house, get a dog, change jobs, have a baby, trade in cars (twice), change jobs again, quit your job, start a business, start another business…..and then remember to take time to actually breathe….I don’t know if I’ve done enough of that lately. Sometimes I wish I just had a year when I could say that nothing really important happened. Does life really ever slow down?
I know the answer is no and that it’s what we do in between all those hectic, life changing events that really matter. The hugs, the phone calls, the flowers for no reason, the hand written thank you notes, the saying “I love you” every day, the nights out with friends…all of these things are what’s really important. Because life can get way too stressful and way too scary really fast when we don’t slow down. I know this first hand. This winter I have been really sick…really sick. And I haven’t told a lot of people what was going on with me, but people could sense it. They could see that things were not right. Turns out, I, for some random reason this time around, could not handle all of these life changing events. The stress, literally, made me sick. I couldn’t eat; didn’t want to eat. I had GI issues that I’m not even going to go into here. I lost of a ton of weight and felt completely out of control for the first time in my life. This illness lasted for over two months, and it still lingers a bit. Believe me, I am by no means 100% better yet, but I am the right path to getting there.
So birthdays. They remind me that I am still here, and that I have so much more living to do. One year at a time, life will continue to throw me curve balls, to challenge me in so many ways, and will force me to gain perspective about everything. This year for my birthday, all I want is peace (and not in a Miss USA world peace kind of way). I want to be peaceful with my life. I want to slow down. I want to not take things so seriously. I want go out on dates with my husband. I want to take more photographs of my daughter. I want to just…be. There is perspective in everything, and we need to remind ourselves of that every day and every new year of our lives.
