It’s April now, the in-betweenest of all the months – in between winter and spring, not the beginning of the year, but not yet the summer. The middle.
That’s where I find myself right now, in the middle (cue Maren Morris).
I’m not a new mom or a newlywed, but I’m still a young mom and a young-ish wife. I’m not super early in my career, but I also haven’t yet built the thing that I want to build. I’ve passed the discovery phase of my 20s, and now I’m learning how to undo patterns and habits that have rooted their way into this new decade.
The saying – when the student is ready, the teacher will appear – has never been more true in my life than in these last three months. My life since January has felt like a bootcamp in life skills: finances, emotional health, communication in marriage, parenting. I’ve been a sponge, soaking up new skills, shedding old perspectives, adopting new paradigms.
For one thing, we’ve stopped using personal credit cards completely. And I don’t mean that we use a credit card, and we pay it off every month. I’ve literally closed down credit lines. It’s one less thing for me to manage, and I will never go back.
Emotional health has become a real pursuit for me. We went to marriage counseling for the first time. I’m wrapping up a study on the subject with women from my church. Dates have become a weekly non-negotiable priority. I’m learning every single day better ways to give and receive love, so that I can be the best mom and wife possible.
I’ve had a onslaught of gray hairs appear that I attribute to this particular learning season, but at the same time, I am enjoying this season so much because I have a glimpse of what’s ahead for our family. I have total and complete faith that our family legacy is being built, day by day, right now, in this season, in this year.
I am the farthest person from a marathon runner, but there is a special place in my heart for athlete analogies. I’m in the slog of the training phase. It’s slow. It’s hard. It’s sweaty. I’m moving a single step – a single action – at a time, but I’m confident that I’m heading in the right direction. The beautiful thing about this “race” is that it could be 26.2 miles, or it could not. Maybe it’ll only be 3 miles because God’s timelines and God’s ability to fulfill are infinitely greater than our own. Good news for us non-runners.