2013 Word in Review

2013 was a wonderful, tough, exhausting, amazing, joyful, love-filled year. In the last year we have seen love grow leaps and bounds in the ever changing, quickly growing, little blessing we call Ella. Our hearts have been filled to bursting with the love, joy, and pride that comes with watching your child grow from a totally dependent infant into an ever-increasingly independent toddler. What a year it has been!

Last New Years instead of committing to a resolution that I was sure to break and stress/guilt trip over, I chose one word to be my focus for the year. I let it permeate my life - sometimes at the forefront of my thoughts, sometimes in the back of my mind. No guilt over constantly doing or not doing something. Just letting that one word be part of who I am. 

My one word for 2013 was love. My main focuses were to fall more deeply in love with my Savior, for my family to always feel and know my love, and to learn to love my career again.  

The hardest of these was the last one. I have struggled greatly (though rarely vocalised it) with my career in the 20 months that my sweet Ella has been around. Don't get me wrong, I believe whole-heartedly that God led me into this career and it is very fulfilling to be able to use my gifts and my passions in ways that impact so many young lives. But with Ella, my priorities and passion shifted to include her, and I have had a hard time reconciling my heart with the amount of time my job requires verses the amount of time I desperately want to spend with her (which is pretty much every minute I can). Add to that being in a totally new school and some student and coworker issues that I have never experienced before (some that came just weeks after my resolve to fall in love with my job again) and you can imagine the mess my heart and mind were in. 

I can say now that I am finally finding my way back to loving my job. The summer was a welcomed reprieve and with the help of some other coworkers, mentors, and good friends (and lots of prayer) I was able to jump into this school year in a better state of mind. This past semester has been sooo much better and much more rewarding. I still struggle with being a working mom but I'm starting to accept that this struggle is one on-going area of my life where God's grace is going to have to shine the brightest. 

All in all, I'd call my one word and focus for 2013 a success. So much so that I'm going to do it again. My one word for 2014 is . . .