A Year In Review: 2012

I had a whole long post written out, with all these links back to the year and some of my thoughts about what life was like... and then I scrapped it. It felt too long, too heavy, too contrived. So this is my review of 2012, from my heart:

These last 12 months have been some of the best of my life, and also some of the hardest. We finally "won" our battle against infertility, but we also pushed our way out of a tunnel of grief from an adoption that didn't work out. A lot of this year centered around that and the birth of our daughter.

And with that came learning how to be a parent, and still be a good wife and partner to Matt who had just taken over a business and was busy and stressed and stretched. I learned a lot about myself this year, learned things that I realized were yucky and needed to be changed. I learned how to not sink into one facet of my life, to not let one piece of me define and dictate all the other pieces.

I became someone else this year. I let go a little more and my heart softened in spaces that had been hard for a long, long time. I grew up. Not that I wasn't an adult before, not that I wasn't responsible, but I was more selfish, more distracted by the little battles, more concerned about the kinds of things that can't matter all that much in the end.

I don't have it all figured out of course; but what I do know is this - even in all its messiness and chaos, heartache and suffering, life is full of goodness and beauty. There are always bits of joy and hope found among the ashes.

2012 was bittersweet and precious and really, really wonderful. I'm thankful for what I learned, for what changed in me and my marriage, for my friends and community, for my amazing husband and my miracle baby girl.