February 1

For some time now, Brady's been talking about acquiring a blue unicorn to go with his pink one. (I have no idea why he likes unicorns so much but there ya go.) So during a mall trip this morning, when I saw that this was the very last blue unicorn at Miniso, I bought it and brought it home, where it elicited the strangest and most gleeful squeal from Brady when he got home from school. But before then, I walked around the mall with Flabbycorn (as Brady named him) tucked under my arm.

During a conversation with a store clerk, she stopped and gestured toward the unicorn, smiled, and said something that stuck with me for the rest of the day: I love that you have the confidence to walk around like that. I mulled the statement for a moment, smiled, and made some random remark in return. But my mind kept a'churnin'.

I haven't always been confident. At all, really. Younger me could've won first place ribbons for 'least self-confidence' and 'most likely to doubt herself and her decisions.' I was so afraid of judgment and censor that I almost never spoke in class. But today, the sales woman was correct: I didn't care about all about who might be looking at me. 

I'm not sure when that confidence became a thing, but I'm thankful for it. It's a beautiful sign of the transformative power of faith in God.