never younger than today

I have been twenty-two for only a couple of days and yet I feel different...older. Strange. :)

I'm excited for this next year of womanhood. It is going to be a life changing year for me. I have many new roles to fill this year and I am excited and anxious, and most definitely full of joy at where this next year will take me. I have two wonderful friends who are getting married soon and they have made me a special part of their day. I get to be a bridesmaid and enjoy the blessings of being a sister to another couple who will be able to share in married life with myself and my future husband.

I will be married in a few months, and I am joyous to see where life as a wife (rhymes) takes me. I am immensely blessed by the man who is to be my husband. It has been a tremendous journey for us to be at this moment, but I would never trade all the things we have journeyed through. I have grown up so much in his presence and I thank him for the huge dose of patience he found within himself everyday. He has taught me so much about life and in turn has allowed me to be the woman I have desired to be.

I will graduate college, an immensely self-fulfilling achievement, as I am the first to do so in my family. It is a feeling of pride, the kind of humble, overwhelming, exciting, joyous moment where I will get to walk across that stage and hold a degree hard earned.

I will continue to write, enjoying the inspiration that has come at the release of my insecurities (thank you Lord for that). I will move to a new city, meet new people, enjoy the blossoming friendships I have found in the past few months, watch my Red Sox come back (cross your fingers...), and I will enjoy each trial and challenge I face. And in result, I will take the opportunities that come and the chances for growth and life change.

Twenty-two will be a very different year for me, but I am so excited for all that is going to come and for the things I have yet to experience. I will never be younger than today, but I am blessed.

Image: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. A woman I admire for many reasons. And we share the same birthday:)

i love words

I've been looking inside for a while, searching myself for a sense of who I am becoming. I came up with a few things:

I am a writer. I love words...and this story I am writing is going to turn me inside out and upside down.

"A Journey Fulfilled" has been a story I have been writing for about five years now. It started off being called the Fulfillment Project, and in reality it was a project built to bring some sort of fulfillment to my life. For so long I ignored the writer in me and now having embraced it, there is a wholeness that comes from using this gift. It's funny, I hear writers say all the time that every story becomes an autobiography in some way. I dismissed it in my younger years, but writing this story now I see the journey I indeed have embarked on.

I've done a good amount of respectable writing. I was an editor-in-chief for a college newpaper and I have my fair share of fiction, but once I embraced the thought that I am a writer the world opened up in a completely different way.

I get it now. I understand who I am and what I really want out of life. It's been an incredible healing journey and I continue to grow in my understanding of why I was created with the tender heart I have always had. My emotions control 99% of my life, lol, and I love that. I know my fiance could take 15% less and be more sane, but it's that intense range of emotions that gives me inspiration. I see the sadness in strangers eyes when they walk by, I feel the hum of the earth, I sense joy in people around me. It sounds whimsical I suppose, but it's true. Deep inside of me is a call- a love for words and a yearning to put them together.

Everything that I have been through in life has brought me here. Every tear, every broken heart, every misconcieved notion of happiness, every celebration and triumph, and every happy memory brings me to this point in time. When I, as an author, and a writer, can look forward and know that my words have meaning because the journey I have taken has given them strength and wisdom. One day, my children will read my words and they will know that I wrote in a way that meant something...and they will know that I never forgot to be grateful for the fact that I love words.

"There is something deep within us, in everybody, that gets buried and distorted and confused and corrupted by what happens to us. But it is there as a source of insight and healing and strength. I think it's where art comes from."
-Frederick Buechner, In Of Fiction and Faith