Welcome to 2017. A new year. A fresh slate (how much longer can we use that term and people know what a slate is?)

This is the year I feel like the fog will lift. We got married December 2008, pregnant Fall of 2009, first baby June 2010, second baby May 2012, third baby December 2013, and fourth baby October 2015. Now that the youngest is one and starting to sleep more I feel a bit more like myself.

Every time I went to start something new or do more of what I love I had another baby and my life was wrapped up in keeping a newborn alive. Now I can leave the house for more than a few hours. In fact in 2.5 months I will be leaving everyone for 10 days to go on my first missions trip since before I was married.

I am becoming me again. I am still mom. I am still wife. I am still pastor. But it is a lot easier to find myself in all of that as life goes on. There once was a time in my life that anyone that knew me would say I was rather chatty (not catty). I talked…a lot. I was hyper. I was nuts. I was all over the place. That was my personality. I dominated the space I was in. People were intimidated by me at first because they said I just seemed so sure of myself, and of who I was (eventually they fell for my ways and loved me). I miss that. As I have gotten older I have gotten more quiet. Probably because no one ever stops talking in my house and when I get the chance to be out and about I just want to sit and listen.

But I miss me. I miss my sure of myself, not scared to act a fool younger me. I think I worry too much that people will see me as immature. Probably because people always told me to act more mature and less crazy. But why? Why shut down who I am because of others? I mean I still wear dorky shirts with geeky sayings and graphics. So why not allow myself to be the person I once was proud of. I mean I was a total geek. I walked around quoting Monty Python skits in the hallway of my high school, and I had this great pair of mittens that looked like monkey sock puppets that would sing love songs to each other. I was the camp counsellor that was super cool and loved because I was wild and played dress up and ran around with the kids.

In the last 7 years it has all been about my kids. My lack of sleep. And the large amounts of coffee I drink. Throw work, and a husband into that and there was just so little time to be me.

So I vow that this year I will be wild and free. That I will be the old assured self I used to be. Yeah I am a pirate on the right. Nothing better (well there were a ton more photos of me from camp days…I had no shame). I want to put myself out there. I am me.