All my dreams didn’t come true in 2019.

In fact, they didn’t come true even in the last decade.

I started 2010 face down on my bed, sobbing into a pillow at the stroke of midnight. I had been dumped just a few days earlier, a time when I once thought I would be getting engaged.

Ten years later, I thought it would be a pretty rad story if I could post that I spent New Years Eve 2019 next to my husband, or at the very least, my boyfriend.

Well, if you saw my NYE post, you know that’s not what happened, but in a surprising twist, I like the real story far better.

Very few of my old dreams or plans may have come to fruition this past decade, but a whole lot of dreams I never knew I had in me did. And I became a person that would leave a younger version of myself shocked and amazed.

From a timid girl, who only did what she thought she was “supposed” to, who thought her only story was her love story, and who only wanted to play it safe, to...

• Standing on a glacier in Iceland.
• Swimming under a waterfall in Honduras.
• Living outside the country.
• Finding a love of writing.
• Spending NYE at home alone and loving it.
• Taking steps toward owning my own business (like, what?!).
• Jumping out of an airplane.
• Becoming a cat person (quickly evolving into crazy cat lady and a-ok with it!).
• Living on my own and now unsure if I could ever share my bed (I hear husbands snore!).

I don’t share this to show the unexpected ways I’ve changed, but to hopefully inspire you, in the midst of unanswered prayers or unrealized dreams, to consider the unexpected ways that your journey has changed you, too.

In the beginning of a new year, a new decade, it’s easy to have tunnel vision on our plans and hopes for the future, and maybe even on the pain of those not yet realized.

But this next year, I challenge us not to lose sight of the realities we could have never dreamed, that shape us into people we never could have planned.

We can’t predict them, but rest assured they’re on their way. ♥️

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash