Taking time to look back

I just finished reading the book Remember Me by Sophie Kinsella, in which the lead character loses three years worth of memories in an auto accident. Set in 2007, Lexi only can remember her life up through 2004, and she is left to struggle to fit into her own life which has changed dramatically in those three years that she can’t remember.

As I read — no, devoured would be more precise — the book, I couldn’t help but muse over how much my own life has changed in the last three, five, even ten, years. Not just how my life has changed, but how much I’ve changed on the inside.

Over the last few years, I’ve come out of my shell dramatically. When I take a personality test, I now straddle introvert and extrovert, whereas even just three years ago I still was firmly an introvert. Even as I thought I’d live in Nashville some day, I never expected it to so dramatically become HOME for me. I have made countless connections with people here and across the country whom I can’t imagine not knowing today. Every connection, every challenge, every change has helped to shape the person I am today.

Today is my second wedding anniversary, and its so true when I say that I love my husband more today than I did when we said our vows on that warm January day in 2007. To be honest, I think there was a time I didn’t think I’d ever marry… much less discover someone who is so completely my other half and without a doubt my soul mate.

It’s been over five years since I graduated from college, and its been almost ten since I graduated from high school. Oh my how different I am since high school!! Honestly, I’m not sure I’d recognize who I am if my high school self met my married-living-in-another-state-doing-odd-jobs self.

As Christmas cards arrived in the mail — several from old friends that I’ve known for many, many years — I looked at pictures or read notes, and I mused over how we’ve all taken our own paths in life. How this one has children. This one has gotten divorced. That one is on the fast track of their career. These are married and enjoying their life of marital bliss. And yet we all jumped off the spring board into life from the same place at the same point. While life has taken us different ways, in our hearts we will always be the dearest of friends.

There’s no way to ever comprehend what it would be life to lose years of your life’s memories, but it is possible to look back and see how each of us have changed. While some of those changes were wonderful and others hard to get through, they all shape us and take us to wherever we each are at any given time. I am grateful for everything that’s taken me to where I am today. Because I’m happy. I have my challenges to deal with on any given day, but those challenges only show me that I am alive and living a life of my own. Living a life I never want to forget.