by Rebecca on 2008-04-09
At the beginning of 2008, I adopted for my annual theme the phrase “what a difference a year makes.” (In 2007, my theme was “This year is MY year!” and it turned out to be an amazing year. So, I thought that assigning a theme to each new year could be a good way to bring good karma to the year.) Anyway, William and I would smile as we passed the one-year anniversary of certain milestones in our relationship: January 20, the day he fixed my flat tire; February 16, the Pink Dance, etc. And my comment would always be “What a difference a year makes,” since on January 20, 2007, when my friend (and nothing more than a friend) William was underneath my car fixing my flat in a dark parking lot, I had not the slightest inkling that on January 20, 2008, we would already be married. And as we started hearing about our friends who were planning for the 2008 Pink Dance, weʼd smile about our experience at the 2007 Pink Dance and Iʼd think, “What a difference a year makes.”
Anyway, itʼs an intriguing idea. Iʼve often reflected on the period of my life right after I graduated from BYU and moved back to Texas. I was 25 years old with a masterʼs degree and unemployed and living at home. And I spent months and months looking for a job and wondering why I didnʼt have any friends and why I had to live at home when I was very obviously a mature and capable grown-up that deserved better circumstances. It took me a year to find a job, and other things started to fall into place very slowly after that. But again, I would look back at August 2005 from my vantage point of August 2006 and think, “I never thought Iʼd be here a year ago.” At the same time, Iʼve come to see how that year of unemployment and living at home was an amazing experience for me to reconnect with my parents and learn to love them as true friends. I also learned that there are alternative blessings to be had, even when the desired blessing still seems afar off. Hence, the importance of remembering “what a difference a year makes.”
Anyway, the other reason that I wrote this post is that William surprised me today by presenting me with a photo book of our first year together and titled it “What a difference a year makes.” He actually cheated a teeny little bit because our first date was in August of 2006 and then we didnʼt start dating until February of 2007, so it covers more than a year, but still. The book is a cute little softcover book, with pictures of us from when we were dating all the way up to our wedding and honeymoon, narrated with text from emails, Google chats, Williamʼs journal entries, and conversations. Suffice it to say that the book made me cry, and itʼs kind of hard to do that. Itʼs a gem of a book, and once again it made me thankful for the difference that a year can make.