Life-altering events have a way of putting our lives into perspective, of making us take a look at who and where we are, how we got there and then asking ourselves if we're satisfied with our answers. Some life-changing moments happen decades apart and form who we're going to be for the next chapter of our lives: mine happened in the same week. In fact, they were 5 days apart and then a few months later.
Profound, life-altering moment #1: The Birth of Little Miss Sawyer Lynn.
People say that the birth of a baby changes you. The assumption behind this statement is that said baby is your child. Well, you know what they say happens when you assume…Despite the fact that Sawyer is not my daughter, but my niece it did not stop my world from shifting the night she was born. What this precious bundle brought into the world by my sister and brother-in-law could never know upon her birth that she was forever changing her aunt’s life. No, I can’t just say changing. Sawyer set my life back on the track it was meant to be on. She saved me from myself and set my world to rights again. From the moment my sister told me she was pregnant to the first ultrasound picture to the day she blessed the world with her presence, I felt something in me begin to shift. Then came that text at 2:34 am – the one I missed because I’d passed out reading four hours earlier – and the phone call I answered while still asleep at just around 5 o’clock. She was coming! Finally, we were going to meet the newest member of our growing family!
What I didn’t know was that four the next 19 hours I would be having a revelation that started with the question, “What the hell am I doing with my life!” and ended with, “Nothing as important as this” shortly after I saw my sister and her husband held the first addition to their own little family.
I walked out of that hospital a changed woman.
And for the next few days all I could do was think about my life, where it was, where it was heading, and where I wanted it to go. All the while, I was packing up my campus apartment where I’d lived for the past year and a half (the first 12 months of which were the happiest to date). And here is where my second revelation came.
Profound, life-altering moment #2: Graduation
Also known as, “Holy Crap! I’m not ready to be an adult! How did this happen? I still don’t know what I want to do with my life! ….or at least that was what was going through my mind before, during, and after the big ceremony. I graduated from Saint Louis University in 3 ½ years, partially by accident, partially by design. Surprise, surprise to me the day I discovered I’d actually pulled it off.
So, hey big world here I come. Please be nice to me. And so far, it has been. I have a good paying job, a place to stay (rent free), a loving and supportive family, friends who ask me to visit with an open invitation to come and go as I please when I need to get outta dodge. I am blessed to say the least.
Blessed, yes. A saint, no. I am deeply human and all that entails. I want things to happen in my life. Big, splashy (to me, at least), exciting things like getting a great job I love, finding the man of my dreams, settling down, having lots of babies, getting published and becoming a world renowned, best-selling author.
Are these things happening, I asked myself as Fr. Biondi talked about our bright, successful futures as SLU alumni (because it is stated, not implied, that we will be nothing by successful as a result of our fine, well-rounded Jesuit education. Failure is not an option.). I answer myself no as I sit next to two people I’ve never seen on campus in my 2 ½ years at SLU. They aren’t happening because I don’t know what I want. At all. From anything or anyone. Especially myself.
Fast forward to months down the road. Yes, months. I am a slow brooder. My thoughts and feelings needed to brew and simmer for a while, that while equals months. Anyway, months later while sitting at lunch with my Dad in Royal International Buffet I crack open my fortune cookie – we have long ago accepted that I should live my life by the writing found between this sweet cookie-cracker – and I read, “No one can walk backwards into the future.” WOWIE!
Profound, life-altering moment #3: Is this like Freaky Friday when the wise Asian woman picks the perfect fortune for her customers or is the universe trying to tell me something?
I went with the universe. It seemed more plausible. In other words, it was trying to tell me, “Forget all the stupid crap you’ve done in the past 22 years, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, take what you’ve learned and use it to make your future look the way you want it to, Kaylin.” Like that picture of my sister’s family in the hospital, except it will be mine. Like Biondi’s graduation speech, except it will be fact, not hope or wishful thinking.
In light of these 3 profound, life-altering moments of clarity, I’ve decided:
1) Family is the most important thing to me.
2) I’m going to get my master’s and PhD then become a college professor whose class everyone wants to take.
3) Love will come when it comes, but I am and I will be ready for it, even though I know it will probably knock me on my sweet little patootie.
In short, the world is my oyster. Bring it on because I’m going to fill it with love and babies and books!
;) that's my girl
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