What I've Learned This Year

“Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of.”  ~ Markus Zusak, I am the Messenger

I promise this is my last year-in-review type post.  If y'all are half as sick of these as I am, well.....I feel your pain!  I almost didn't write this blog since I already did a "What I've Learned in My Twenties" blog this year.  But since I've done one of these for the last couple years (in case you missed them here are links to 2009 and 2011), I hated to blow the tradition.  And I always enjoy looking back on a year and seeing what I'm taking from it as I enter the next. 

So here's what 2012 taught this girl.

1.  Rejection isn't fun, but it's something I can live through, learn from, and survive.

2.  I'm stronger than I think, and can do things that scare the crap out of me, like jumping off of tarzan swings in a jungle.

3.  When you are standing behind a famous football coach and a Heisman runner up during an interview, you should always jump and wave like a crazy person so people can see you, and not just your camera, on tv.  Lesson learned.

4.  People are more alike than they are different, be it different religions saying goodbye to loved ones, or everyone being Irish for a day in Chicago.

5.  Childbirth is not fast, it's not easy, and it pretty much made me want no boy to ever touch me again.  (But boy was it great holding my goddaughter when she arrived!)

6.  Horrible things happen.  Things that shake us to the core.  But we have the power to decide how we will deal with those things.....be it remembering better times, doing kind things for others, or pulling together with a community.

7.  You should probably pay attention to the "danger lecture" given at the beginning of white water rafting in a foreign country.  There is a chance you might fall out of your raft, the remainder of your party not realize you are missing, and nearly drown.  Never a dull moment on my vacations!

8.  Boys have the hard part while proposing (that crap is stressful as I learned while helping McCain) but the easy part at a wedding (groomsma'am duty was so much less stress than being a bridesmaid!)

9.  My family is full of the most fun people I know.  I'd hang out with them even if we didn't have the same gene pool.

10.  Thank the Lord for young field goal kickers at Stanford.  They made this girl scream like crazy at the Fiesta Bowl in January and again in South Bend last fall.

And, finally, the lesson I think was the most valuable for me this year came from BFF.

This life is mine to live.  I get to decide how to spend my days.  But I don't have to decide all of that today....sometimes it's good to just sit back and breathe.