a voice memo discovered, eight years later

I could simultaneously laugh and cry at this voice note I found, tucked away in my phone. One clear observation: my southern accent goes from subtle to ready-for-the-big-stage when I’m tired; I must have been really, really tired when I recorded this. I also find it amusing that I mentioned scaling back, when in the years to come I would birth another kid and go to grad school and move across the country. Only God knows. But the sentiment still stands, and my heart still sings amen to a lot of these thoughts, whispered into my phone’s recording app all those years ago. The woman pictured above has been pruned and refined and hurt, and she’s made it work. I’m proud of her.

“Sometimes, people ask me how I do it all and it leaves me a little bit confused. I don’t know what else I would be doing with my time, if I wasn’t filling it up with all of the things that I currently do. But that’s kind of how everyone is, with whatever they’re going through, whatever stage of life they’re in. I do feel the Lord telling me to step back and reevaluate this new year. There’s going to be a little bit more on my plate than in years past, and I feel like the Lord really wants me to do a few things well instead of a lot of things without heart or passion. So I might be able to pull a lot of things off, but that’s not what He’s called me to do. Just because you’re good at something, or just because you get the job done, does not mean that’s what God’s called you to do. And then there’s also the idea that I do a lot of the things that I do because I don’t have a choice. My family has to eat. My marriage has to thrive. My children have to flourish and bloom and learn and experience and my heart has to be tended to and my spirit has to be nourished. I’ve gotten a lot of those things wrong over the last few years. A lot of the priorities wrong. A lot of the effort was there and the intentions were there and everything else just kind of got out of whack. I really want 2013 to be the year that I, not that I get it right, because I’m never going to, but I want 2013 to be the year that I learned how to make it work for my family. That I leave this next year feeling like I pruned a little bit and I refined a little bit and I hurt a little bit to make it all greater at the end.”