Two days ago our youngest, Sloane, turned two and we officially transitioned from the baby phase to full on toddler phase. Now I can’t call her a 1 year old anymore.  I enjoyed telling people that I have a 1 year old.  I still conjures up images of a baby, newborn, or infant.  But a two year old…that’s something entirely different.  That conjures up images of a rampaging toddler, a noisy, mischievous, loud, sometimes annoying toddler trying to find their way in this messy world.  Basically a little adult in training, and now she’s growing up.  She’s the youngest of our four daughters, and also our first child after a miscarriage, and for that reason she’ll always represent what it means for our family to experience redemption.

Also last week, saw another milestone completed as a result of a second chance. For five years now we’ve been meaning to get around to building steps and building a play-set in our backyard. Years have passed, chances to make progress ignored. We’ve even looked for other houses in that time, growing impatient with our own lack of progress at transforming our current home into our perhaps forever home. Then, in a matter of weeks, ideas we’ve been musing, or rather dragging our feet over for years, quickly materialized into reality.  Not only that, but it was largely our sweat equity that made it happen.

This whole season feels like a second chance.  Who knows how often second chances come around for any of us (the optimist in me suspects a lot more than we realize). Either way, it’s something to make the most of. Not a lot of people get that, and for that I feel both fortunate and, if I’m being honest, anxious.  Why me?  Why us?  I believe every opportunity, every advantage, comes with a price tag.  Usually that price tag is buried in the lesson you learn from the experience.  

What am I supposed to learn from this?  This second chance to build new habits of being and doing?  This second chance to learn to really pace myself and my life?  This second chance at developing emotional agility so that I can better connect with my girls and the relationships that matter so much to me?  These are the questions that I write about each day, mull over with my friends, and have been trying to answer for myself.

As we went inside after wrapping up our work last week, I just couldn’t help saying over and over to myself and Samantha, we did it.  We just built a staircase in our backyard.  The thing we set out to do we did.  That’s an amazing feeling. I wonder what took us so long?  What about the other areas of my life that I’ve been meaning to get around to for some time now?  Now just might be the time I’ve been waiting for, my next second chance.

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