i used to be a creative in action. i would go outside, look around and appreciate every bit of beauty nature had to offer. i wrote constantly. if not every day, at least a few times a week. i wrote notes and cards to my loved ones. spoke and shared my thoughts whenever i was invited to do so. i was involved in people’s lives. people would call me to talk, they enjoyed my company and wanted to hear my opinion about things. i took pictures. lots and lots of pictures. i laughed hysterically. i danced spontaneously. i loved class and lectures. learning was the highlight of my days. i was productive and i kept busy without complaining.  my day to day required minimal planning and the ability to jump from one task to the next. i saw the fruit of my labor; it was an incredible time in my life. every now and then, i ponder how i can get back to that. how can i become that vibrant creature again? exactly like that, just a few years older and as a parent. after a few failed attempts, I finally realized that just isn’t possible.

i didn’t take the shift into adulthood and parenthood very well. it was sudden and there was no manual for it. after a series of unexpected misfortunes and living in a perpetual state of disappointment, i adopted a terrible way of thinking. life kept throwing me lemons and knocked my defenses down; i was negative Nancy on the regular so i started squeezing juice in my own eye.

“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength”                            -Corrie Ten Boom 

last year, my best fried wrote in a birthday card and told me to stop trying to be old lizzy. she said i have to take what i’ve learned from the different phases of my life and build on that to become the woman God is calling me to be. we are a compilation of our experiences; each day comes with new ones so it is not possible to be who we were yesterday, let alone five/six years ago. my life drastically changed when i became a mother and i can’t keep expecting it to go back to the way it was before then. all of what i knew at that time was flipped upside down. i learned how real life can get. that vibrant creature i was had no idea what hardship was. she couldn’t handle a day in this life i live now. i may miss her optimism, carefree spirit and financial freedom but i don’t miss her naivete. i don’t miss her inability to plan and i don’t miss her self-serving decision making. i appreciate the resilient, responsible woman i have become. right now, my mission is to find balance between the young Lizzy i once was and the joyful Elizabeth i want to become.