Last week was my “1-year anniversary of wellness.”

What is this 1-year anniversary “thing”? So glad you asked.

If you’ve read my blog posts in total, you’ve learned I have been on a 6-month cycle for almost a decade… Step 1: an idea of an explanation. Step 2: treat idea. Step 3: get a boost in quality of life for 6 months. Step 4: drop off a cliff again.

It usually timed out like this: Step 1: December-ish. Step 2 & 3: January – May-ish. Step 4: Start decline through the summer and drop off the cliff in September.

I told my husband many years ago and many times over … if I can be well for a whole year, we might actually have finally figured out what is wrong.

Last year I skirted through September (2020) and encountered no cliffs. It’s been a year since I painted my house then plowed into homeschooling our kids with beach travel rolled in. There have been a few dips, but all have been identified, resolved, and my health has continued to gain strength as the year has progressed.

365 days

• 365 days of stability.

• 365 days of being able to book the calendar and keep the plan.

• 365 days of easy laughter and dancing with my kids.

• 365 days of thriving memories.

  365 days of firsts

• My first day of packing a lunch for the road that was sufficient to meet my nutritional needs because I had physical reserves to pull from.

• My first day of school for my new career.

• My first day of meeting a new friend and having the margin to invest and build a friendship.

• My first day of eating baked goods in a decade (gluten free & sugar free).

• My first day of getting sick with an acute germ and knowing what was happening.

• My first day of traveling on vacation and being well every single day to do what I wanted to do.

• My first day of fitting the birthday parties in among the life activities without having to block my calendar for a week before and after to prepare and recover.

• My first day of travel baseball that I could sit at the ballpark until 9 PM in the freezing cold without dinner and literally not pass out from the lack of food.

• My first day of swim team in which my body wasn’t crying out for me to drag my body home to climb into bed.

• My first day of seeing Jesus’ footprints in the sand all of these years.

To many of you, these firsts are table stakes… I have low expectations out of life. Being sick for a decade taught to expect nothing out of this life. EVERYTHING is a gift.

Nothing is to be taken for granted. Not even the ability to walk back and forth from the camper to the house as I load and prep for one of our epic beach trips.

On my anniversary, I had a million things to do. Instead of doing any of those things I did 5 simple things:

1)    I took my running shoes to the place where I re-learned to walk many years ago – the park

2)    I took a nap I didn’t need - because I could

3)    I wrote my deepest gratitude to my God in my journal – because He did the work

4)    I bought, with my kids, a memento of memory for this day – because altars matter

5)    I laughed, I danced, and celebrated with my people that we made it – because it took all of us doing it together for it to work

Every anniversary is a big deal. A birthday. A marriage. A degree completed. A job maintained.

This was the biggest of my life. I survived all of the other ones to get here. I have never fought so hard or waited so long for anything in my whole life. I have never wanted anything so deeply or let it go so completely believing it would never happen. I have never been stripped of everything in my personal humanity so completely. I have never met Jesus so fiercely.

I dare you to fight hard for what matters to you. I dare you to wait long for what is most important. I dare you to face Jesus honestly.

2 shoes. 2 miles. 1 year… I thought you might like to know.

bless,

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