30

30.
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Here I am.
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Friends, I have so much I want to tell you.
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I want to tell you about turning 30.
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I want to tell you what He has done.
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I want to tell you that the maturity I’ve gained, the faith I have, the truth I know has been HIS work in me, I want you to know that I so badly wanted to be the person I am now becoming many years ago, but it has come through suffering, through struggle, through disappointment, and also through dreams coming true, but finding them bitter compared to the sweetness of knowing Him intimately. It has all been loss compared to the deep knowledge that He loves me personally, that His love is all that matters.
My daily failures have overwhelmed me at times, and yet His grace is deeper and I believe I am loved and secure in ways that only come from His proving His goodness and love and trustworthiness rather than my own, my own goodness, trustworthiness, oh how I’ve failed to love, even myself… but He has not failed, He has not grown weary in showing me His love. His love never fails. But I do, and oh I have, and oh His grace still meets me here… there’s a continual invitation, no matter what, an availability to me that only asks: will you be available in return? Will you turn your eyes and focus from yourself, and fix your eyes on your source, the means by which any good activity or outcome is possible.
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If I had known, when I was 20, about what the next ten years would look like, as I longed to then, I would have been afraid, surprised, and I would have totally sabotaged it all by trying to prepare myself, or take some kind of credit. These years were way harder and way better than I could have ever anticipated.
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But today I look back and I know for certain that the only thing that really mattered was He was there. He was in it all, and He was faithful. And just as that cliche poem goes, He carried me during the seasons that were most painful, though it seemed He was most distant during those times, hindsight has revealed some of the ways He held me when I was most angry with Him, most confused, most faithless. He was faithful. We look back and see only His footprints, because if it had been up to us we would have given up and turned around and quit long ago. Because we just don’t have what it takes, for marriage, parenting, ministry, living life well. But He does. And He has been faithful, and we have received grace over and over. All we have done is received and learned to say thank you, and learned more and more how to get out of His way.
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But I also want to tell you how far I feel I still have to go. There is no ‘arriving’ only pressing on. I want to tell you how much I’ve learned and yet how I feel like I know nothing at all except that He has done it. I want to tell you that I’m nowhere near who God has created me to be, and yet over these years, I am unlearning bit by bit all the ways I had become self or other or stuff dependent and reliant… so that I can depend on and rely on only Him. And the unlearning hurts… there is this invitation to continually die to all that I’ve believed myself to be, so that I may find who He created, in His image, through His eyes, by His enabling… to be used by Him. I feel crippled so many days by how little I have to offer in and of myself, and grace meets me there in those moments, because He says ‘you’re right’ and ‘I know you’ve failed again, but here I am, choose me.’
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So this is where I begin. This next decade. Ground zero where we always need to be. Here in this place where I am honest about who I am and where His life is free to have its way and His grace will always run deeper still.
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I want to talk about marriage, about motherhood, about my relationship with my body, and also what I’m discovering about who God made me uniquely to be.
But for today I’ll say this:
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Thirty is awesome.
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The wrinkles and grey hairs are for sure genetic, but today I’m going to claim them as hard earned and embrace all that has come along with them.
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When I’m forty I want to look back and say that I lived this decade outside of where I was comfortable- that I got comfortable with being uncomfortable, because growth and stewardship and, mainly, He lives there. Cheers twenties and peace out.