(If you are unaware of the TV series referenced by the above title, might I suggest a Netflix queue addition? J.J. Abrams, your genius knows no bounds.)

Earlier this week, I lifted The Kid up to find a baby-butt-sized imprint of mustard poo on my Central Park Half-Marathon t-shirt, and the temptation to see it as a metaphor was strong. Especially a few hours later, when my mileage of 2.0 was a post-pregnancy, post-childbirth PR and the idea of 13.1 remained a laughable pipe dream. What was funnier was that I didn’t care.

Life these days is like a shoe that’s starting to fit. This is welcome news for a girl who spent her first few decades trying to wear the wrong size. Things are starting to come together, the rough edges softening and coalescing with each other as everything comes to a head in The Kid’s grin, in my newfound ability to make him laugh–my new personal record and the one that makes 13. 1 fade into the background. Yesterday I went to spin for the first time in almost a year and ran into our realtor, the one who sold us this house, and showed her pics of TK. She oohed and ahhed appropriately, then we went to our respective bikes and I proceeded to not pass out–another goal attained.

I went to lunch with a high school friend earlier this week, and we talked about how Atlanta is different from our hometown, and the thought of those teenage years in Montgomery brought back all the feelings of awkwardness and insecurity I felt then, not knowing who I was yet but reasonably certain that I was doing everything wrong; feeling completely inadequate and sure that I was woefully alone in that struggle. I had a list of goals to attain then, boxes to be checked off, and none of them were Dodge spit-up faster or Balance work and child-rearing or Teach my son to be a decent human being. And yet these are the ins and outs of my life now, the little victories that define my days.

A friend from dental school reminded me recently, as I lamented my return to teeth and the ghosts of mediocrity that plague it, that our years in the lab and with patients were coupled with instruction that pointed out everything we were doing incorrectly. I think about how grace led me to a career defined by filling holes and redefining small-scale anatomy–the perfect soil for nitpicking and second-guessing and self-doubt–and I know that there are reasons that haven’t been revealed yet. I think about how grace, also, outfitted me with this desire, this need, to write; how the literary path is paved with more rejection letters than book deals; and I know that “I have not yet arrived” will be a mantra I can proclaim for a lifetime.

But then I pick TK up at school, and he laughs in his car seat as I talk to him, and The Husband gets home and we sit on the couch, a party of three, and I know that, also? I absolutely have arrived. I look at them both and the thought echoes in my heart, clear as a bell, despite the flaws and inevitable mistakes: I’m going to be pretty good at this. That in grace, every second is an arrival to exactly the moment for which I am meant. Not a new version of me, but the person I was becoming all along.