On Friday, I turned 30. I am now officially thirty, flirty, and thriving. Well, I’m at least thirty and still flirty with my husband. Sometimes I wonder about the thriving part. Don’t we all?
Birthdays are one of those times where you both celebrate, wonder, and sometimes mourn.
Let’s Celebrate
I’m excited that I have friends to with celebrate this year. I’ve had a couple very lonely bithdays that have left a bad taste in my mouth, so celebrating with friends means a lot.
On Friday, I was able to go out to brunch with some friends from work, which was so fun. It was a mix of ladies of different ages that I just genuinely love being around. This was followed by dinner with my husband and my best friend from Ohio coming into town.
Altogether, this year’s birthday celebrations were great and fit the year. This has, in general, been a really good year of my life and I am happy to have lived it and excited to see what’s ahead.
I Wonder…
I also wonder. What this next year of life will bring. Some years are better than others. Will this next year bring more bad or more good? What things will change? Will I accomplish something big? What will I lose? A new year brings possibility, and also a bit of fear. I wonder how much of each I’ll get.
Because this year has been fairly good, there is the fear that this next one will horrible. Or maybe I’ve just thought this year was good and next year will make this one feel hard in comparison. It’s exciting and terrifying to look out on the fuzzy landscape of a new year of life, not knowing exactly what’s ahead.
A Time to Mourn
There’s also some mourning. There are some things I wanted to accomplish this year or by my thirtieth birthday that I just haven’t. I’m not a famous author travelling around the country to speak. I still haven’t found a literary agent that will take me on. I’m not well known enough. My “tribe” isn’t big enough. I’m not sure what to do to fix that problem.
What I mourn this year is different from what I’ve mourned in prior years, but there’s always a little something to mourn, something we hoped for that didn’t come.
In my thirty years of life, I have realized something. We all have something that we want and don’t have. That’s just part of life. For years, my thing was wanting to be loved and wanting to be married. I got that, but that didn’t mean my longings and desires stopped. No, that desire was fulfilled, but as soon as that happened (or shortly thereafter), a new desire popped up.
Unmet Desires Never End
The truth is, if tomorrow all my dreams came true and I got a book deal and started speaking and doing all the things I want to do (or at least think I want to do), some other desire would well up in my heart. As humans, we are never satisfied this side of heaven. We always have an unmet desire, something that’s just out of reach.
That unmet desire shouldn’t ruin our present though. That’s what I did wrong with my desire for a spouse. It ruined my present. I was always longing for the future and never grateful for what I did have. I’ll be honest and say that I think some of that is because the desire for a spouse is such a visceral desire. It’s a hard one to ignore, much harder than the desire to write or speak or anything of that nature. Still, I wrapped my identity and my life about what I didn’t have instead of focusing on what I did.
Still Longing, but Thankful
Am I where 15 year old Ashleigh or 20 year old Ashleigh or 25 year old Ashleigh thought she would be? In some ways, yes. In other ways, no. I still question God’s purpose for me and what I should be doing with my life more than 15 year old Ashleigh would have thought possible (I figured I’d have that figured out once I was “grown up.” What a joke!). Still, I am thankful. I am thankful for my life and for my husband and my friends and my work and all the little things that make up my life. They aren’t perfect. They aren’t always exactly what I would want them to be, but they are good. Most importantly, they are gifts of grace from a good God who loves me. That’s the best birthday present of all.
Photo by Skyla Design on Unsplash
I really enjoyed this post. I can definitely relate to the experience of reflecting on another passing year that commemorates the day we first breathed life into this world. Indeed there is good and bad, joy and pain, ups and downs…but through God’s grace, it’s all worth it :))