You ever heard someone say they're finding their way?

I mean, what does that even mean? Do we ever really find our way in life? I think that we hope we do or we say we do, but are we ever even sure? Life is so changing and so adaptive that the way we may think we have found will likely just require a new path in no time.

I'm not sure why we try to convince ourselves that we've got it all figured out or why some people try to throw perfection in our faces, but it is - for lack of better wording - garbage.

Life isn't supposed to be perfect. Messy things are real. Complicated puzzles are the most rewarding to complete. The days littered with small incidents and to do lists are the best to reminisce about.

Are we really even living if we hold it all in a tidy little bubble?

I get overwhelmed sometimes at my responsibilities, at my lack of time for just myself, and at the idea that one day there will not be little feet running in my hallways. This feeling can overtake me and make me tap my chest to remind myself to actually take a deep breath!

Life won't always be like it is today. I won't always have this precious time with my precious babies. I won't always get to lie in bed and carefully form my body around Lawson's tiny frame and he won't always need to be touching my arm to fall asleep. When the days are long and crazy, I keep those few moments in the back of pocket to remind myself..... It won't always be this way.

Julianna is so grown up these days. She pretty much takes care of herself and entertains herself. Her imagination is wild and fierce, her dedication and work ethic to be admired. She is smart and witty, clever and kind, and an old soul in that tiny body. She is wise beyond her years and looking much older than seven. She breaks me and makes me so proud. I'm amazed watching her grow - I'm amazed at her mannerisms and behaviors that are so reflective of an older child, but then that sweet girl hugs me and tells me how much she loves me and she transforms right before my eyes back into that six pound baby girl who changed my entire world.

Life's blessings are often littered into our lives in the strangest ways. It's meeting a stranger who shares her life story that somehow inspires your hand or holding the door for someone who needed just one small kind gesture today. I don't have life figured out and even though I might say that I, too, am finding my way, I'm not even sure there is a way.

I don't think of life as a roadmap or a way. I think of life as simply life - a gift, not a promise. It's a string of beautiful and messy days, long and short days, good and bad days, woven tightly together to make us who we are. Life isn't a noun to me - it's more of a verb. It's what we're doing, not just a thing.

We are what we do and we reflect what we give. I have felt like a better person this past month, full or promise and hope and confidence. I have enjoyed evenings of homework with my kids as much as I enjoy anything. I think life happens in those boring, mundane every days just as much as it does in those extragavant days and I'm willing to bet that when we look back --

those boring days will be exactly what we miss the most. Enjoy them, my friend. We really do blink and this thing called life gets right away from us - remember to live it.

Fresh start.

It’s been two weeks since I made a decision I thought I’d never have to make.

My entire life, so to speak, has been centered around “what I would do when I grew up.” Easy. I would work at the family business and eventually the clinic one day. I would become a physical therapist and everything would just work out….

Until it didn’t. An occasional bad day turned into an occasional bad month that became a hard year. Being a physical therapist became more about paperwork and insurance regulations than about treating patients and the unrealistic expectations led to resentment of my beloved profession. You would’ve found me three years ago searching in medical journals or reading books to expand my knowledge base and pouring over new information to ensure my patients were getting the best course of treatment possible.

This year, you’ll find me in my office scouring over insurance denials and entering them on websites because no one wants to pay for anything. You’re likely to find me typing up letters justifying why the patient is in physical therapy or shaking my head wondering why the patient is in physical therapy when they’ve verbally expressed “ I don’t want to get better – I want my disability.”

There’s a cold, dark world to physical therapy that people don’t see, sadly. It has become a career that is regulated by insurance companies and by disability lawyers and it’s driving away the same therapists who desire so much to actually care for patients. It’s a hard truth to swallow that some people don’t want to get better!

My physical therapy career has recently made me bitter and cynical. It has left me feeling upset and unfulfilled. I read so many articles about this being a top career and I’m wondering where these people work. I throw a grand a month to a student loan I’m paying for a job I hate…..

And that’s my truth. I have prayed and cried and hoped that God would lead me on a different road and here I am, two weeks later, preparing to leave a job I planned my entire life around. My children are growing up around me and not before me and I’ve always wanted to be a mom. A real mom. Not the mom who puts her job first and her family second and sadly, that’s exactly what I’ve done. I can’t do that anymore.

I have three more months of working here before I officially clean out my desk of 8 years and say goodbye to so many patients and coworkers who have become like family to me. It isn’t this job, it’s the outpatient environment. I don’t know if my next job will be any better or any different, but I do know I need a change and a chance. I cannot sacrifice who I am as a person anymore and I need a life and my sanity back. I am not cut out for the outpatient world. A hard pill to swallow when that’s been your life plan. Nothing like waking up one morning and just knowing the path you’ve been on for twenty years is anything but what you’d imagined.

So, no, I am not running for board of education, but I am working for the board of education beginning in August. I am excited and nervous and am eager to feel like I am truly putting what I know to good use again. I don’t want to just be a “filler” or “someone people go to before they can get their MRI.” I am over that and I need purpose. I feel as though this job appeared to me because that is the prayer God answered. I feel this is exactly where I meant to go. This is what I need so I can love my career again.

Please keep me in your thoughts through this transition – I do not expect it to be easy. But hope – sometimes you just have to jump and hope there’s something there to catch you.

I cried today.

I cried today.

I had a normal day at work today. A regular, steady Wednesday of patients hustling and bustling and spreading myself too thin, which is a normal occurrence. I remember sitting in Ash Wednesday service just last week and heavy hearted as Father Leon talked about not being a Cyclops and erasing the I off of your forehead and I almost cried there too. I sat and thought of all the times I wish I'd had an I and put me first. I sat and thought of all the times I put everyone else before me.... my husband even whispered, "I wish you had that problem." I'm sure there's many more out there like me - who please everyone else first - so I'll go ahead and end my pity party and get to the point.

I cried today and I went home and had a glass of wine.

I didn't need the wine to handle the stress of the day (I'm a pro), but needed it to handle the stress of the world. In case you've been living under a rock, there was shooting in a Florida high school last week that claimed 17 victims. Seventeen precious lives were cut short by a boy with a gun - a boy who never should've had a gun.

I cried last Thursday, too. I cried because my child, my first born, beautiful baby girl asked me if a shooting could happen in her school. She showed me how she had to curl up and protect her head in case someone came in their school. My beautiful daughter and her long legs lie before me, curling into a ball and my breath stopped and my heart raced. What kind of f**king world do we live in where this is okay?!? Why does my child have to know that such violence even existed? Why is this her reality?

Pardon the language, but understand the sentiment. I get so mad sometimes that I want to scream; I cry instead.

I cried today because I was driving home from work and listening to the news on the radio, a common occurrence. They recapped the school shooting in Florida, reported that the 7th grader (yes, 7th grader) in Ohio who shot himself in the school bathroom had died, and how a school shooting was halted in California by a report of a possible threat and the discovery of 2 AR-15s and 90 magazines.

Jaw.
Drops.
Tears.
Fall.

What future do our children have to look forward to if we keep allowing a world full of such violence and such fear? I am terrified every day I kiss her goodbye. What if Little Johnny wakes up today and decides that he can finally follow through. He will take the life of anyone, not understanding the spiraling effect and he doesn't give a crap if that's your child, the light of your world. How do you even begin to wrap your mind around that?

We are all one gunshot away. A gunshot anywhere. There isn't a safe haven anymore and it terrifies me. How do we arm our children with understanding, with compassion, and with a plan? How do we teach them that despite these things, the world is still good? How do we, as parents, push it out of our minds that this could happen here?

I cried today and I'm sure I'll cry several more days. I prayed today too. For Julianna's future and Lawson's future and the future of all of our children. I don't know what needs changed or what the answer is, but I know SOMETHING has got to give and it can't be anymore of our children that take the bullet. We cannot let them continue to be victims and die in vain while things remain the same.

We have to be able to enjoy this beautiful life we are given without fear.....