What is HAPPENING to me?

I’ve never been a great planner.

Sure, I’m good at planning THINGS – like parties and field trips and baby showers and weddings – but I’ve never been good at planning my life. I’ve never had a very solid “vision” of how I wanted my life to be.

If you had asked me back in 2003 what I’d be doing in 10 years, I might’ve said:

“Running the Corporate Events Department at the Fortune 100 Company where I work.”

Or maybe:

“My husband and I will be living off the royalties from my first novel; we’ll be cruising around the world while I work on my next one.”

Or perhaps:

“Hiring someone to run my wedding consultation business so I can focus on what I really love – being a ‘wedding singer!’”  

What I would NEVER have said – NEVER in a million years! – is this:

“Homeschooling my four little kids and reinventing myself.”

I’m serious. I barely recognize myself. And this is not just because lack of sleep and living off leftover mac-n’-cheese has taken a tremendous toll on my (previously) good looks, either.

Something has happened to me.

Weird things are going on. Unexplainable things.

I’ve suddenly started liking bluegrass music. I’m taking mandolin lessons. I want to have a family band. I watch shows about fishing on TV. I read magazines about women who get pregnant well into their forties and end up with huge, ridiculously happy families.

I’ve basically decided I wouldn’t mind selling our house and moving into an RV so we can travel the country. I love The Waltons. I’ve become somewhat of a Libertarian. I cry at the drop of a hat (okay, that one’s not such a new development.)

I read all of the Amish fiction I can get my hands on (I didn’t even know that was a genre before!) Praying for my kids has become almost automatic (since I worry about them constantly!) My faith has become more important to me than ever before – not just knowing it, but actually living it.

I have started baking bread. I use honey in place of cough syrup. I want to live at the library. I’m planning to make my own laundry detergent AND dishwasher detergent. I clean with vinegar. VINEGAR.

My new favorite thing to do is ride my bike. I can have a conversation with 5 people all at the same time. I scrapbook like the world is going to end tomorrow and I’m destined to be the last surviving historian.

I have parties ALL the time. Birthday parties, tea parties, sleepover parties, football parties, Christmas parties, Harvest parties…you name it. I am an introvert, people!

I had to learn to cook. This is a big one for me because I am NOT a good cook. I am also not a gardener. Yet, I have tiny green sprouts growing in dirt-filled egg cartons all over my kitchen windowsill.

I used to love horror fiction and scary novels and now I can’t even watch the news.

And the weirdest thing is that I drink coffee. Every. Single. Day. I hate coffee!

What has happened to me? Does this strange transformation happen to everyone once they become a parent? Does everything go haywire and backwards and upside down?

I’m almost completely unrecognizable!

I thought I knew myself – my opinions, my likes and dislikes, my abilities, my preferences.

I am changing.

I thought I wanted a career. Recognition. A business. Things.

I have changed.

I never knew it (and I certainly didn’t plan on it), but with all of the things I thought I wanted, it turns out that I wanted most wasn’t even on the list.

It turns out that having these four little people that mean everything to me with me each day is what I wanted. They are what I should’ve envisioned a decade ago but didn’t.  

They are changing me. By the day – sometimes by the minute.

And I don’t know what’s going to happen in the next ten years. Will I be completely different then from the way I am now?

Maybe so.

Like I said, I’m not a good life planner. I can’t see a single thing that’s ahead of me. But at least now I know who I want beside me.