Letter To Yourself

Jill at Baby Rabies participated in a blog idea to write a letter to yourself at a previous age. The direct link to that post is here. I want to participate in this idea and plan on doing so when I have more time to write (Toots just "woke up" from a non-nap), but I wanted to copy and paste a portion of Jill's letter to her 25 year old self because I thought it was great. I think I would've written this to myself at the beginning of law school or the beginning of Practice Court (Age 21 or 23), but I still think it applies.

Your confidence is shaky these days. You worry if you’re living up to what others expect of you. You wonder if you’ll ever “be” somebody. What I’m about to tell you is going to blow your freaking mind. When you become a mother soon (yes,soon), that tiny little person will do more for you than a 4 year college degree ever did. He will help you find yourself. Your confidence will grow, not because you will be a perfect mother (you really won’t even be able to figure out how to pee without putting him down the first month), but because you will be amazed at your own strength. Your priorities will fall in line, and you’ll know that happiness isn’t about becoming who you wanted to be when you were 17, but about allowing yourself to give up a little control and seeing where life takes you.

You’re going to learn to truly appreciate the moment you’re in, instead of constantly yearning for the next big thing. It will continually be a battle to live in the moment, but you’ll work harder to stay there. Success won’t be measured by the size of your paycheck or the make and model of your car, but by the number of nights you get your infant to sleep longer than 5 hours and by the joy that fills your heart the first time he belly laughs at you. Sure, that may sound like a drag now, but I promise it’s a ton of fun… most of the time.

I actually cried when I read that part of her letter because it is exactly what I would like to tell myself when I started law school. I'm kind of embarassed to say this, but it's the truth, so I will...About a month before I found out I was pregnant with Toots, which would have been right about the time I actually had just gotten pregnant, I was finishing my first quarter of Practice Court and would soon be starting my final quarter of law school. Right before our last final, several of us were talking in a classroom and one of my friends said something about how she wasn't going to have kids anytime soon, so she was depending upon her friends to start having kids that she could play with. She and a few of the guys we were talking with all looked over at me (I was the only one married in the bunch talking) and I said "ohhhh no, not me! I'm WAY too close to finishing school and starting my career to have a baby now. At the beginning of law school, I would've thought about it, but definitely not now!" And, little did I know, there was a baby growing in my belly at that exact moment and my life would change forever literally a month from then. Of course I was totally excited when I found out I was pregnant, but it did change that "plan" Tim and I had about me working for three years before I got pregnant and it did virtually end my very quickly upcoming career as a prosecutor for at least the next several years, but it turned out wonderful and I couldn't ask for anything else.

The point of all this is, I found some insight in Jill's letter to herself and it reached out to me and would be something I would've also liked to say to myself at the beginning of law school, at my 21 year old point in my life. A baby changed all my priorities and all my plans, but it was already God's plan and it turned out to be the best plan He could've had for me.