Leap Years

I was born on February 28th, and although being born on the last day of a month is not unusual, if that month happens to be February, you are special. You are asked if you were born on a leap year more than you can imagine. You quickly realize people are fascinated by those rare humans and seem desperately in search of them. So the responsibility that comes with my birthday is to learn how to accurately compute how old you WOULD be so you can answer that question. And let me tell you, that question will come. Additionally, you are forced to deal with the disappointment that comes when you feel obligated to remind them you were truly born on February 28th like you said and that your birth year was not even a leap year. Cue the big let down…usually, the conversation ends with them telling me it would have been really cool. Welcome to the world of my birthday and its fascinating connection to leap years.

Leap years are pretty bizarre. We suddenly get a day. A day that does not exist normally and is not widely recognized. My One Year Bible does not have a February 29 option for all the leap years that come around, which yes I know makes sense, but still, it makes you feel as if you’re suspended in this void of time. It is a unique blip in the continuous marathon of time which makes you stop for a minute and think about the whole idea and how strange it is truly is.

Last night, I crawled into bed with my husband after a quality-time-filled birthday and right on cue, the sentimental side of my brain, which is probably one entire half of it, could not help but get a few thoughts in to close the night. “What was happening last leap year?” My husband and I had gone on our first, and maybe our second date. Little did we know where that was all going to lead. “How about a leap year before that?” My husband was graduating high school! Whoa…

Only two leap years, only eight years. In some ways it does not seem like truly that long of a time period and yet, when you start rewinding in leap years like the six second rewind on your remote, you end up feeling after just one click of the button, the person you are watching is… different... and so very incomplete.

It’s amazing thinking about the person I was in 2008. I was a crazy mix of concentrated growth and stubborn immaturity and self-deceit. I was beginning to climb an incredible mountain that God would bring me to the top of before watching me lose sight, falter, and slip back down again over the next couple years. I was definitely several heartbreaks and dead-end relationships still away from my husband at that time.

Click forward a leap year, see 2012 flash on the screen, and you’ll see a girl crying about her dad moving out without saying a word and clinging to her prayers about what is next in her life, still in shock and denial about the life she found herself playing a role in. Watching her you would realize that she has NO idea in the midst of all that wreckage, the next leap year of her life will somehow simultaneously include her entire relationship from dating to marriage with all its exhilarating and breath-taking moments.

When you rewind and go back, you realize there’s so many extreme emotions riding parallel throughout the story, there’s extremes highs and lows existing side by side. If you could rewind and select the difficult, gut-wrenching clips and watch them a row and it would be a story no doubt, but it would not feel quite right. It would not feel fully accurate. You could then click back and watch the highs, connected and strung together and relive the elation, remember feeling light and free, and yet it would be so disconnected and uprooted from what made it that feel that way in the first place. The seeming absurdity of all those two versions co-existing is surprisingly the most accurate and full story you have.

Rewinding and watching the person you were in a specific moment, you would be overwhelmed by the blindness to ALL THE THINGS you know were just ahead! Just around the river bend! So many unexpected highs and lows that would shape and mold you that you were living completely oblivious to! There were so many plot lines half-finished, and yet you had no idea in that moment God was not even close to being done!

At this point in my life I am starting to embrace the truth of the constant unknown, getting comfortable exposing the lie of having any idea what is next, and settling into a place of both wrestling with and resting in God. In fact, this year I can actually feel the weight of this leap year, knowing it is distinct marker for the beginning of an entirely new chapter in my life. How? Well for one thing, right now, this very moment, my husband is upstairs studying for a test that may or may not change his career path. Kind of a big deal. And me?

I’m writing.

This leap year, I’m using the day that is unique and abnormal as my trigger to do what has felt exactly like that to me: acknowledging I am starting, stepping out, letting go, jumping off, and then diving… head first.

So thanks, leap year. Thanks for getting this girl to stop thinking and start typing, to stop anticipating and start participating. Where you’ll take me by the time you come around next is definitely a little intimidating, but also a tad bit thrilling.

I am kind of glad we’ve come to this place. No longer my birthday shadow, but now my adventure marker. I like it.

Till next time…

#time #writing