A year of Passion.

So. It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything. 2013 was a long, strange, crazy year. Definitely not all bad, it’s just that, frankly, I don’t remember half of it. Maybe that’s because so very much happened. I started working at a really great little bakery, only to find out 3 weeks later that I was pregnant (and while on a camping trip, no less.) Davey got a second job working as a part-time youth minister at our church, and suddenly, life was a whirlwind. There was No. Time. No time for anything. Somehow we made it through summer and fall and bam! Christmas and New Year’s was here, and now it’s February 2014 and I don’t even know how I got here. I do know that we found out at the first of the year that we are having twins, who should be here sometime in the next month or so. A boy and a girl. So exciting. So overwhelming. But it’s been a year of overwhelming, so really, what else is new? I also know that I came into this new year feeling like something really had to give – the whirlwind was just too much – the piles of laundry and dirty dishes I couldn’t keep up with, the hubby I never got to see, all the things that broke (and I do mean ALL the things. Like, EVERYTHING broke this year), and all the stuff that just piled up and I didn’t even care because I was buried in my own pile of overwhelmed and pregnant. And then came TCTC (that’s the Tennessee Christian Teen Convention) and there I was, wanting to go but having a meltdown because we had just found out about the twins and we were leaving in 3 hours and I hadn’t packed and didn’t even know where I was going to sleep and I was just tired and did I mention overwhelmed? But I muscled thru, and Davey gritted his teeth (he's been doing that a lot l, and we went, and it was wonderful. We ended up with a room together (so nice!) and suddenly, I found time to relax, take a deep breath, see old friends, and remember what it felt like to be somewhat human again. And suddenly the last 8 months of Overwhelmed weren’t going to cut it anymore. During one of the last sessions of the convention, the speaker challenged us to ask God for a word for the year, and my heart started hollering. I’d actually been looking for that word for two weeks or more. The One Word that would fight the Overwhelmed. And so I asked. And boom. There it was. The elusive thing I had been looking for, that I needed to get through whatever this year has to bring. That I had been lacking, losing for so long that I had forgotten what it even felt like. And yes, when the Word hit me in the chest, I cried. It was very Pentecostal up in that convention center for a few minutes. Davey just gave me that “awww, you’re so pregnant and hormonal!” squeeze that I’ve been getting A LOT lately and asked me what started the tears, and I managed to choke out that I had found my Word. And? That word is PASSION. That thing that keeps us pushing forward when we love something, when we really want something, when that something is so important that everything else fades. I used to be passionate about lots of things - crafting, cooking, decorating, taking a shower, my husband, my kids - but my passion for just about everything had completely evaporated over the last few years of babies and work and stress and just trying to get by. A life without passion is no life at all, but it was what I’d been living for so long. Fear and exhaustion and TOO MUCH had choked my Passion and buried it so deep that I wasn’t even sure I could find it again. Some days I’m still not sure if I have. But now that I know what’s missing, it gives me something to work for, and the apathy, the Overwhelmed, is getting smaller. Now, I’m not gonna lie. I’m still pregnant with twins, and exhausted, and I spend a lot of time just laying on the couch, but gosh darn it all, I’m doing it with Passion! I took on a fun crafting challenge - crocheting a 365-day scarf (I only have to crochet one line a day, so how hard can that be?!) - and I figure it’s going to take a lot of Passion to raise twins and a 3 year old AND a 4 year old, and no, every day is not going to be perfect and the Overwhelmed will creep in and I’ll want nothing more than to crawl into bed and wait for my kids to grow up and take care of themselves already, but then the passion will speak up, and remind me that I love these crazy kids, my beautiful family, and I’ll get out of bed, maybe even take a shower, and keep pushing on, because that’s what you do when you feel passionate about something. You give it all you’ve got, even when what you’ve got isn’t much. It's still enough. So. Here’s to a year of Passion.