let the songs begin again.

It is the first day of a brand new year, and I can hardly believe that it is 2014. Not only that, but I have been married for six and a half years now, and I have an eight and a half month old daughter. When did I become such a grown up? I feel like it was just the other day that I pulled up onto the campus of Montreat College, full of excitement and anticipation of being in college and away from home. Fast forward nearly ten years (what?!) and a lot has changed, but I'm feeling a similar excitement and anticipation roiling again in the pit of my stomach for what this year will bring, and I feel a grin spread across my face at the knowledge that it will be very good, indeed.

Some of you may know that I began a venture this past year with my sister-in-law, Christal, called Arbonne. I was the biggest skeptic at the beginning, having already tried and hated network marketing, but there was something different about this company and Christal convinced me to just see if it might be a fit for me. With the encouragement of her, and my other upline friends, I jumped in with both feet and have been sometimes stumbling, sometimes sprinting, and sometimes crawling toward my dreams these past seven or eight months. Today, my dreams have become that much more attainable and some have already been realized. Today, I am officially an Area Manager with Arbonne and I only have two weeks left of my regular full-time job [and Christal is a Regional Vice President now!] This means a number of things for me: the most important of which is that I am officially a stay-at-home mom for my beautiful daughter, Josie - this alone is cause for the utmost rejoicing and tears of joy; the second thing that this means though, is that writing will now be pushed back up to the forefront of my daily tasks alongside mothering the most adorable and happy-go-lucky eight-month-old. While cleaning up my office/library/craft room today I found my original action plan from my first month in Arbonne and I got to reread the WHYs that I put to paper when first embarking on this journey. Intermingled with the staying at home wishes and financially free plans I found this: "I want to write. Hands down, I know that's what I was created to do." And that's what I plan on doing. I plan to write something every single day, whether it's here in this space, in my personal pen and ink journal, or on my novel that has been ever gnawing on my mind these past months; I will write. And this makes me so incredibly happy. God is so good, and He truly provides the desires of our hearts. I am in awe at his grace and mercies every day and to Him I give all the glory and credit for my current dreams-coming-true state.

Let there be songs on this mountain once again!