I loved 30! The 30's are the best years of your life!
I have only been on this planet for 30 years but I already have a few take-aways…things that as I move through this decade I can be confident in:
1. There is no best year. There is no best decade. Dickens had it right… it is the best of times and the worst of times. I have put a lot of pressure on best in my life. Best is ridden with comparison and aint no body got time for that. Comparison has ripped me of too much joy in this life. I'm sure there will be great things that happen in my 30's and I am also sure there will be a lot of crap to go with it. See #2.
2. People I love are going to die while I'm in my 30s. Some of which I am acutely aware of at this moment. Some of which will be sudden. I'm hoping and praying I make it through but I am also aware that there is no guarantee for me. Thirty means I am past the age where the only people who die are grandparents and other people's people. I am going to lose some of my people. I feel an ache for those losses already.
3. That my children will drive me bat-shit crazy and I will like them more than any other being on the planet-- all within a five minute time period. Deac is probably our last baby. My loins are not quite ready to own that one but it may be our reality. The other night as I turned off the lights and picked up Deac's onesie from the day I found myself burring my nose in his dirty baby clothes. I just needed to smell him. I needed to lock that smell somewhere deep within me. That smell is love and comfort and mama-can-make-it-better. For a minute I wondered if I kept it hidden in a rubbermaid somewhere and pulled it out in 16 years… would it smell the same? My instincts tell me no but my heart tells me try it anyway.
4. I will struggle with my weight. This battle has been mine since the 2nd grade. I am now facing losing the same health-affecting 50 pounds I have lost twice before and the other 20 that's just so I fit in to that one pair of jeans from that one time when all I did was workout and eat Subway. I no longer struggle with the things I did surrounding my weight as a child or a teenager or even as a young adult (when I fit those prior mentioned jeans). There is no longer relentless teasing on the playground or crude comments. I'm not trying to catch me a man. The people I am surrounded by could care less about my weight. They see ME. They see my heart, for better or worse, and are in no way concerned about my jean size. That's all me. Since at the moment NONE of my adorable jeans fit I am feeling defeated and all yoga-panty. This battle is my own but how I fight it demonstrates to my daughter what it means to love herself. The line between vanity and health can be thin for me. I will walk it carefully in my 30's… striving to always stay on the side of health because I know Aubrey is watching.
5. My marriage will get better and harder. Two nights ago I pulled out the scrapbook of memories and plans I made for Jay on our second Christmas together. I was 21. I carefully created this book that looked perfect. I had cute quotes and lists of the things 'to do before babies' and 'to do after babies'. I had all the cards I had written him while we lived apart carefully glued in to pages. I knew this was something that would fill with our dreams and history (only it all had to be in my handwriting because his was too messy) but it now sits very empty. There was too much pressure on the book and we never wrote in it after the first week. Right there would be the root issue of that. I have given up on perfect in our marriage. I know that planning a perfect life does not guarantee it. I am working on giving up my own control issues and desire for perfection. I know in this next decade there will be times that I think I can do better. There will be times I believe that he should do better. There will be moments I look at him and fall in love all over again and times I look at him and think really… 50 more years of this? My sweet boss has said a million times to me (when I get all judgey and say to him How are those two married?) that there is grace in every marriage. There has never been anything so true. It has taken me 10 years together to know that we are probably not going to get divorced. That he is not going to be a recreation of my dad. And that I am enough for him and he is enough for me. Note: can someone please remind me of this when he buys his 8th truck since moving to C'ville, which will happen sooner than I am comfortable with, I'm sure.
6. There is nothing more important than good friends. I have been blessed with a best friend. A person who knows me better than I know myself. The other day she yelled at me for 4 minutes on the phone while I ugly cried. She has never, in our 16 years of friendship, raised her voice to me. She screamed and ranted and cried as she did it and informed me, in no uncertain way, that I needed to stop apologizing for being happy. There is oh-so-much back story of how we got to this point in the conversation that will all reveal itself in time but I needed to ugly cry and she needed to yell and we needed to do it together. She is my therapy. She is my other life partner. When I moved across the country I was terrified that I would not make more friends. It took a while. In the past 2 months God has shown me that She will never leave me without close girlfriends because She knows that is my life-line. Last month when I got some big, scary, life-shaking news (I'm fine, the kids are fine, Jay is fine but it's just not time for it to be internet published) my sweet Jodi did what she does best. She read books about the thing and is reporting back what I should read and not read (because it's just too much right now). Things I should think about and begin to work through. She is making a plan when my heart won't let me but my reality needs me to. She is my person here. It's like I can breathe again. How people survive without girlfriends is beyond me.
So this is 30... The only thing I am 100% sure of is that it will surprise me.
Note: This adorable picture in which my children are cute and I am dressed to go out for my birthday with all my friends with a gin & tonic in hand... it looks like life is great, right? 45 seconds later Deac puked all over my linen pants (the only nice thing that fits) and I said words that a toddler shouldn't hear come from my mouth. THAT is 30.
