Ahh! I'm turning 30!!

Warning!

This is a long, totally self indulgent, post.

But I needed to do it!

It may be annoying to anyone who is not me.

Read at your own risk. :)

My Birthday is On Saturday.

I will be turning 30.

I have a very clear memory

 of myself,

(likely before I was blessed with the gift of turning an age that requires two digits)

declaring with much certainty 

that I would never be sad to turn an older age

and that I would never want to lie about my age

that I would always be proud to add another year!

Seriously,

that sounds like 

super-wisdom!

But 

then 

I had a week left of my twenties

and was are staring
at the number

30

and I started to question my childhood wisdom.

I really wanted to be that person who looked at this age with dignity and excitement and joy.

But lets be real,

I freaked out.

There had been a few hard things, 

piled

 onto the other hard things 

that I've been trying to work out as a mommy of two,

and then
 the calendar showed me that:

"Hey guess what? You are old!

Well you will be in one week, anyway.

Better get ready!"

And then

 someone who fits in one of those hard emotional niches of my heart, 

turned 30 

on Facebook 

with what looked like 

SO much more dignity (and coolness and excitement!) 

than I was about to

...

and I crumpled.

Facebook friends, no it was not you, its one of those things you see on accident because its a friend of a friend. Don't worry. 

I called my mom.

She said she remembered how turning 30 felt that way.

It kinda helped.

Then I sat there thinking.

I remembered someone else 

on Facebook 

talking about how as they turned 30 

they were more fit and healthy 

than they were when they turned 20.

And it occurred to me that, 

actually...so will I.

It made me want to look at myself in my twenties 

so I could see

 what I thought

 I was missing
wasn't actually there.

Because after I thought bout it harder,

I realized 

I had begun missing a youth 

that I never had.

I had started inventing a past 

made up of a mix of:

 the very fit, young 

swimmers who share a lap lane with me 

at the college's rec center...

and the famous teenagers of today 

on the TODAY show...

and a pretend person I made up

who wears everything I see on Pinterest...

and this great skinned master of makeup...

who had all things figured out...

and was just so cool

like those get-paid-cause-they-are-just-that-cool bloggers of today I've been looking at.

I seriously thought I was that person before. Back before "life got hard" and I "got old."

But 

something told me that I might be wrong,

that 

I better look back and see who I really was,

because

 maybe I would be happier with who I am now,

than who I was then.

.

.

.

Off to the garage 

at nap time,

to pull out this Rubbermaid Bin

.

.

.

 I went straight for the old box of photos.

I needed the most superficial part 

taken care of right away.

Yep,
totally true,

I think I do look better now than I did then.

Me Then:

(If your face is blurred out, its not because I don't like you (I do like you!), its because I didn't know if you'd want to be on a blog. I blurred everyone but Blake, because I know I have his permission to be on here.)

When I went away to college I put on a lot of weight

and my skin was really, really broken out!

(I was super homesick and stressed over it, didn't help either situation)

I came home and went to our junior college,

stated my (long) journey to healthiness,

and met Blake!

Me Now:

5 months postpartum after #2

(You may see this picture in a future postpartum post!)

I actually have no idea how much I weighed, at my heaviest, in college

but I'm gonna guess I weigh 20 -30 pounds less at the age of 30 than then at the age of twenty.

My waist is 5 inches smaller now in 2012 (after childbirth), 

than in 2003. 

(That was the first time I measured in hopes of workout progress.)

Its not the same shape anymore, 

it bares some molding of this former life as baby bearer,

but its healthy.

And my skin, sadly is still not clear at 30,

but 

its actually super improved.

I'll take it.

So...

Physical Reality check:

I never was one of those fit college students 

that I share a swim lane with now.

I 

was the college student

 who snuck extra milk up to my dorm room 

so I could eat coco pebbles all night long 

after ordering pizza!

I'm doing better now.
I'm not as thin and young as those college students in my lap lane,
but...

I'm in a lap lane.

Not all the time, 

I don't feel like I make it there enough, amidst juggling a family.

But,

I count myself as a swimmer now.

That's a big deal!

And 
seeing pictures of me in the old days 
also gave me the clarity to see I haven't lost my fashion sense since becoming a mom... 
Its quite likely I have never had any fashion sense at all! 
Just a hilarious love affair with shopping 
(which I don't get to indulge as often -- which might not be a bad thing!)

.

.

.

Also,

while digging through this box this thought process happened:

.
.
.

I 

have been on this quest to do more,

be more,

get better.

And I do think that is good.

But I also think 

I'm basing it on ideals,

and not who I am -- who God made me,

or 

is calling me to be.

I want to keep working towards good things,

but 

I'm putting WAY too much pressure on myself!

I am asking myself to figure things out over night 

that take people many years to make work.

I am also asking myself to pretend I don't have natural strengths and weaknesses,

and be good at everything 

without fail.

I found this photo of

my college dorm room 

from when I was a freshman in college:

ha!

I laughed and smiled, and laughed and smiled.

Its discussing! 

I have more like it!

I am a messy, messy person.

I like to clean sometimes.

I like to 

really deep clean 

and make it sparkle.

But when it comes to day to day stuff, I'm at home with messes.

I know what the room looks like clean, so its like I see it in my heart that way, 

and the mess is just kinda a transparency 

placed over the real thing,

 that can be lifted away.

I just usually don't feel like lifting-it-way is the best use of my time.

I'd rather be making it messier 

by cutting up some fabric, paper or ribbon.

Then pushing things over just far enough that I can pull out some paint.

And then sit in the midst of it 

so I have time to write.

That's me.

I forgot!

Here my current day house is a mess while I work on a sewing project 

(to be blogged whenever I finally take an after photo!)

Its kinda hilarious now in retrospect how hard I was being on myself for not keep our house (full of toys, baby stuff, and mommy projects) clean.

I don't know why I thought it would be.

I can't keep my own stuff clean,

how am I gonna keep my stuff plus the stuff of tiny people, who in all honesty can't clean yet 

(no matter how many Pinterest kid age-appropriate chore-charts I pin.)

I mean, it is clean 

sometimes.

Like I said, sometimes I like to clean until it sparkles!

But it has to feel like an art project to make that happen.

I don't know,

it was just refreshing to remember that's

 my normal.

And I will now give myself some serious credit,

because 

what I had been seeing as failure

 in not having a perfectly clean house,

I now see as MASSIVE improvement 

over how nasty that dorm room was.

Flashback with me: One day my roommate and I had to spend a half hour sniffing everything in our room to figure out why it smelled like death, only to find I had a rotting cup of soup (that you could barely see tucked between tons of other junk) on top of our dresser! It was hilarious. We pulled all of our stuff out of the drawers, wrecked our room even more than it was, all to find the smell! I can proudly tell you, that is not an occurrence of recent days. My shower is also not orange anymore! And I don't have to throw rotting pumpkins out my window and wash my bedspread in the shower to get the pumpkin juice out anymore.

Seriously,

I'm like a Martha Stewart of amazingness compared to my old self!

I mean, 

really my house is clean (read: sanitary),

its just very often cluttered.

But I also 

regularly see clear surface area.

I'm improving.

Plus,
I seriously
need
to remember,
all the good things
that come from my messes.
Because
there are good things
that come from them.

If I spent all my time cleaning,
I wouldn't be making all the
fun stuff in my head.

I shouldn't be determining the value of my strengths in light of my weaknesses.

Then 

I started reading:

Now for the deeper, less superficial 

awww....

Isn't that the cutest.

I'm so glad my mom got me a diary

It gave me the life blessing of journaling

which is so good for my soul!

I definitely want to get my girls their own journals when they are older!

14---So young!

And

Fun Photos 

and momentos:

( I don't know how much you will enjoy these, but mmm, they bring me great big smiles!)

It was seriously adorable looking back on my time dating Blake.

Then I saw some random stuff I wrote,

and I realized

that the lost sensation isn't new to me as a mother,

I guess being a person is just confusing!

Or perhaps I am general confused.

I did notice I am generally angsty.

Maybe 

JUST MAYBE

I can learn my lesson and see all the stuff that seemed so hard then, so overwhelming,

none of it killed me

all of it just kept making me stronger,

none of it "made me lose my mind."

So MAYBE I can try and walk in a bit more faith going forward based on that?

Then I saw some wisdom I had penned.

And I thought:

Yep,

need to think these thoughts through again!

 Names hidden to "protect the innocent".

Then I saw this email that I once printed and glued into the book,

and I melted,

laughed,

and melted again

I read 

a BUNCH 

of stuff

 about me being excited

 to get married and be a mom, 

I wrote 

about that a lot, 

for a long time.

It was definitely the call of my heart!

And then 

I found 

our sonogram photos 

of Jasmine.

The first time I ever saw life inside my own body.

That moment was phenomenal.

And 

I realized ...

I've waited my whole life for this!

I've waited my whole life to be 30.

To be married to an awesome man.

To be a mom.

To be who I am now.

Those random thoughts I keep having,

about:

Not being cool anymore because I'm a mom...

Or

Losing who I am...

Or

Needing to improve my life...

Those thoughts are thoughts I let in from other places than my heart

My heart has always wanted to be here and now.

Who cares if my belly isn't flat when I sit anymore,

It used to 

look like this! 

And lets be honest,

I'm fake-remembering it ever being flat.

Why begrudge it's great God-given changes

that have brought forth people!

I've had people in my body!

What!? That's still so crazy to me!

And yeah,

Some Most mornings I am 

really tired

and I look like this!

"The hopeless disheveled mom"

And feel like there isn't anything I can do to fix it.

But look,

same morning,

few minutes later...

only thing I changed was

I decided to smile,

makes all the difference in the world!

My journal journey helped me to see

Its pretty much that simple.

Remember to see the positive.

My life really isn't this pathetic-mom-dullsville 

like I started to let the outside sources tell my heart.

Really, I am on that adventure I always

always 

always 

dreamed about!

(Mac Photobooth fake-backdrop fun -- isn't not perfect as you can see, Blake's mouth is gone!)

My life is so good!

I need to see it in the right context.

See the gifts.

That took
30
years
to grow.

 30

Here 

I 

Come!

I've decided I like it!