30

Last year I was sad when my birthday came. I didn't want that year of my life to end. Twenty-eight was really good to me.

I know that life can't be parceled off into neat, little year nuggets, but it seemed like twenty-eight was full of good. And so I was sad to bid it adieu. That sadness might have accidentally doomed my twenty-ninth year. This year has not been one for the books.

I will state for the record, nothing bad actually happened. Well, maybe a few little bad things happened, but nothing so out of the realm of normal as to define this past year of my life as "bad." Anyhow, all this simply leads me to say, I was very happy to welcome my thirtieth birthday last Tuesday because like so many people, I enjoy a new beginning, a sense that there is a fresh start.

I think that the people who get the most freaked out by their "big" birthdays, i.e., changing of the decade birthdays, are those who aren't content with where they are in life, though maybe I'm just being judgy and smug. It has seemed to be that those who had some sort of expectation about where they wanted to be by a certain milestone have been the most likely to be upset when that milestone comes around and they aren't quite there yet.

Anyhow, I am perfectly content with what the past thirty years have brought me. I'm happy to be thirty. I've been ready. Thirty doesn't feel like a new stage. It feels like a continuation. I'll keep on keepin' on with my crew of people.  I'll have this baby in few months, and I will fall in love with her just like I have fallen for my other kids. I'll punctuate lazy afternoons and evening meals with trips to the beach and drinks with friends. I'll let my curiosity guide me from small adventure to small adventure. I'll read books and think thoughts and enjoy good meals and be disappointed and cry out to Jesus and do all the things I've done before and more things I probably can't even fathom right now. Thirty will be full of years as great as my twenty-eighth and as mediocre as my twenty-ninth. There might even be a year mixed in there harder than any year I have ever encountered. But hopefully, I will be armed with the wisdom I need to see my way through it.

So I end this decade the same way I began it, pregnant with a daughter and excited about what this year will bring.

Although the actual day of my thirtieth birthday was maybe the slightest bit muted, I got to spend last weekend with my best friend in her boyfriend's wonderful apartment, being fed every sort of delicious thing AND getting to sleep in, with nary a Weaver child in sight. 

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