This week marks the two year anniversary of when I moved into my little home and we just got internet for the first time – in reality getting the internet wasn’t my idea. I’d rather save the extra money for… what exactly, I’m not sure. I just find it more enjoyable to save money than to spend it. But my roommate needed internet due to a promotion and I told her that if she set it up then I’d help pay for it.

The last two years have been a whirlwind of change and routine meshing together to make me feel as if no time has passed and as if this has always been my life. I’m still bewildered when I look around my cozy little abode and realize it’s mine and I’m the one fully responsible for it. Sometimes that’s a nice feeling – like when I get to invite endless rounds of company over. And other times it’s not so nice – like when I’m laying in bed in the middle of the night and hear a loud noise out in the living room and snuggle under my covers waiting for someone to call out that the loud noise was nothing. Only to realize that I am the someone now and if I don’t get up and make sure everything is fine then no one will.

It’s 6:44 on a Monday morning and I am thankful for the week stretching ahead of me. My responsibilities at work have morphed and changed over the last year and a half, too. I left the A-Team that I was so fond of because there was a task that needed done and I was the person best equipped to do it. “One year,” is what I committed to. “I’ll leave the team for a year and get everything organized in the other department, then I want to come back.” It wasn’t something that could be promised to me, but my boss acknowledged that they heard me and would see what would happen. The year morphed into fourteen months, but then my dream came true and I was back on the A-Team, but this time as manager.

When I stop and think of the life I imagined as a little girl – this is nothing like what I dreamed of. My daily responsibilities are ones that I didn’t even know existed.

When I stop and think of the life I imagined as a teen – this is far better than what I had anticipated. People talk about how growing up is no fun. How it’s hard to be an adult and you’ll lose your sense of joy and childlike wonder as bills pile up and work eats away at your soul. Mondays are dreaded, the 9-5 lifestyle is a rat race, and climbing the ladder is all that matters.

But it’s not true. I mean, I’m sure it is true for some people, but it doesn’t have to be.

I love my job. I love my life. And, although it’s not always easy (and yes, crying happens), it’s something I feel thankful for on a daily basis. I have a sense of wonder that this gift of a life is mine. I get to spend my days working and serving and making the lives of others better.

In my early twenties I was told many times that it wouldn’t be long until I lost my sense of childlike wonder and joy, and I was scared that the morose grown ups who were giving me that bit of advice would be right and I didn’t want them to be. So, I fought against it. I didn’t want to dread waking up, to dread Mondays, to dread life.

And I don’t.

This year ushered me into my thirties, and while some seasons are hard, some days are stressful, and some hours make me long for the end of my shift, overall, I have more joy and wonder at thirty than I did at twenty.

I’d like to think that now that I have internet in my home I’ll be blogging more often, but I’m fully aware of how busy my life is and how relatively easy it is to simply turn on the hotspot on my phone. And, if I haven’t been blogging in the past, why would having internet change that now? But, I guess we’ll see. For now, it was good to spend the last thirty minutes catching up with y’all. And now I’m off to work. Blessings!