I turned 37 last week. I wish my sweet daughter was correct when she exclaimed the other day “I thought you were turning 36!”  But alas, she was not. I’m not too upset though, I have a feeling 37 will be a good year. 

The last time I wrote consistently was before the end of August. Honestly, I’ve barely written a word that did not involve helping my oldest son with his senior year English homework. Life happened, and it happened hard and fast. I felt lost, overwhelmed, angry, invisible, and if I’m being transparent- guilty. Mom guilt is a real jerk friends. I was drowning, and while I know that the blank page would have been the lifeboat that brought me to shore sooner, I am stubborn. I found it much easier to binge-watch Emily In Paris when I found a moment to breathe. Emily and I treaded water together for a while, but (spoiler alert!) while she heads to Rome next, I believe I’ve finally set foot on shore.  

My initial plan was to borrow from Laura Wifler and my friend Bec and write a list of 37 things I know in honor of my 37 years of life. I have been carrying around a small yellow notebook for about a month, so when I think of something I’ve learned, or have a random thought I can jot it down. The plan was to use whatever made it into that notebook for my list. About two weeks ago I realized I needed a new plan. 

I have written plenty in the notebook. But I’m struggling with this entire concept. I think a lot of things. But can I really say I know anything? I’ve been a parent for seventeen years, and every day I feel like I’m still learning. And then I’ll have to learn something new, to unlearn the thing I thought I knew. Life is always changing. Anything I think I know is just a drop in the bucket to what God knows.  

Instead of writing a list of 37 things I know, I decided to go with three random things about this year, because I just wanted to write something. 

1. While the kids are at school, my guilty pleasure during the week is watching The Voice while I eat my lunch. It is probably for the best that I watch it alone because I am pretty positive I’ve cried every single episode. For the blind auditions, I start watching the audition, and if it isn’t certain within the first 15 seconds that a chair is turning I fast forward to see if any will. If even one chair turns I rewind it and watch the entire thing but if there is no chair turning I skip and move on to the next contestant. I feel physically uncomfortable for the contestants who do not get a chair turn. It feels like their rejection is my own or something.  I thought maybe the tears would stop after the blind auditions and I wasn’t hearing the back story of every potential artist. Spoiler alert, the battles started this week, and I still cried. I’m not sure how I ever watched American Idol where they put horrible contestants on TV just for our viewing pleasure and to get made fun of.1 It feels insanely cruel to me now. I’m thankful The Voice doesn’t do this because I’m clearly having a hard enough time. I love the show so much though, the amount of encouragement that gets tossed around like glitter makes my heart happy. There is no such thing as too much glitter throwing.

2. My husband is a hockey player. He played as a kid, he played in college, and he played beer league as an adult until he took a few years off starting in 2020. He started back up this year on Friday evenings with some friends and when the games aren’t too late in the evening the kids and I head up to the rink to watch. I’ve always enjoyed watching Brent play, but bringing the kids now that they are older makes it so much better. Easton paces the boards like he is watching Patrick Kane from the Detroit Red Wings. I’ve erased about five sentences trying to describe how it makes me feel to see my son idolize his dad. I can’t seem to find the words, it is just one of those things you have to feel to understand. Zoey calls it “beard league” and I corrected her maybe twice before I realized I like Beard League™ better than beer league. It is probably more fitting anyway. I see a lot more beards than I do beer. 

3. I have spent the better part of the last five years trying to fit in somewhere. I wanted to be the perfect homeschool mom with all the best aesthetic wooden resources in my lovely neutral homeschool space. I wanted to be the creative who leveled up regularly. Mastering the next photography trend, or writing the most beautiful lyrical essays. I wanted to be the best Christian, constantly sharing the perfect Biblical content. This list goes on and on. Always trying to fit into a box, always feeling like I was either never enough, or too much. I just never quite fit. Then this last year I decided to stop trying to squeeze into spaces I didn’t belong. I quit pulling up my chair to tables that barely cared if I was there. It felt like I lost some friends almost immediately, the distance growing wider the less I tried to close the gap. Maybe we were just acquaintances, and that’s okay. The thing is, I like warm earth tones, and muted blues, pinks, and yellows. I don’t like most new photography trends. I want to provide my clients with beautiful, classic, authentic, timeless images that tell their story- not mine. If that means slow growth, I’m more than ok with that. The more I try to fit into a particular writing style, the less I write. The less I write, the worse I feel. I can share my faith while being honest about my messes. Jesus didn’t come for the perfect, he came for the lost and I feel lost a lot. It isn’t about the metrics. It’s about the mission.2 It isn’t about fitting in and it also isn’t about standing out. It’s about standing tall and standing true in who God made you to be. It’s about making spaces wider to fit those different from you. It’s about sitting on the floor instead of the small table and looking at someone and seeing them, not just seeing what they can offer you.

For me, it’s about showing up in my life just as God made me-usually with a book, my camera, something to knit, and a gluten-free baked good.3 The harder I lean into this, the more I see the beauty of our Creator reflected in all of creation. Myself included.4

Share Homegrown Haven