This is 30.
Sowing Seeds, Thriving Some Days, and Growing Through the Rest”
I find myself looking out my windows to lush plants, green grass, and potted flowers. The flowers are often wilted mind you, due to a haphazard & unpredictable watering schedule, but potted nonetheless. It’s amazing what time can do. I have loved this house since the moment I first saw it. The carpet was scratchy, the floors unmatched, and the yards random and untamed, but it was ours. At times, I cannot help looking out the same windows and seeing an entirely different scene play before my eyes. A broken fence, a falling tree, an untamed lemon bush, & overproducing grapefruits. Hours of yard work, ripping out redwood stumps and clearing weeds. A repetitive scene that has lasted years, weeding only to watch them grow so you could start from scratch again, but not without giving your husband massive attitude. I see seeded grass that looked more like weeds than any grass you’ve ever seen and tiny baby plants that grew in awkward stages. I remember how many of those tiny plants died, and died again, and again. Yet, today, while so much growth is still taking place, I can see the fruit of seeds sowed long ago.
But, it is also so much more than plants. It’s saving for a home and not knowing when you will ever be able to afford one. Signing papers, taking pictures next to a sale pending sign, and moving in. It’s paying for an AC and a fence when you wanted to buy literally anything else. And it’s laying on a couch with a sickness that lasted years, wondering if you would ever be healthy again. It’s waiting for babies that could run on the lawn you could only picture in your mind. It's going on adventures and working on countless house projects. Some that enhanced your home and then others that ended up being that giant blue wall that still gives you pause before offering any decorating advice. It’s finding out “It’s a girl!” and showing them off to your ring doorbell when you bring them home for the first time. It's a lot of tears and loss and its friends crowded around tables for a laugh and a home cooked meal. And to be honest, it's a lot of not home cooked meals. So many seeds, so much life, and so many memories that ushered in the time that is today.
This is 30. Running a home filled with three little girls, some days thriving and others barely surviving. Making life plans and grown up decisions that you seriously cannot believe you are old enough to make. It's coming up on 11 years of marriage with a man you loved before he even became a man. 30 is not looking the way you had hoped and performing at a level lower than you ever thought possible, but sometimes it's also looking around and seeing a life you once dreamed of. It's listening to your first baby blend words and sitting on the carpet for another round of life and the matching game. 30 is the year you break down & start cheating because you now play chutes and ladders and find that there is simply no other way to play it. 30 is the sound of Addie’s Barbie play voice and Cocoa bean’s coos and giggles.
It’s the enormous Costco water slide blow up Stephen added to your cart, researching notaries for your living trust, and for some odd reason watching too many episodes of Castle. 30 is trying new things, feeling settled, and somehow still insecure at the same time. Little cousins playing, taking your turn hosting events, and having spelling matches or whisper conferences with your spouse on what an appropriate consequence should be during this current stage of parenting boot camp. 30 is a lot of dishes, laundry, meals, and dresses, that is when you are not wearing pajamas; which is quite frankly far too often. 30 is sitting before the Lord and asking Him to heal the places that are broken and to remind you who you are so that you can confidently teach your children who they are. I'm hoping at 40, I will once again see the fresh growth of all the seeds that are being sown today.
Behind the best days…
is a parent making the magic happen.
The mantra of my life as of late has been “finding sunshine in the mundane”. I suppose it’s because I have always struggled within the mundane. Seeking a life of excitement, I can feel lost and forgotten in monotony. However, a summer BBQ with fresh strawberry shortcake was at once a patch of bare soil that required a seed, water, and tending. We as a people crave instant gratification, but the Bible points us in a different direction, telling us:
“For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.”
Your laundry, meal prepping, and swim lessons are important. Disciplining and practicing discipline is worth the effort. Lets make our goals different from our expectations. My goal is to sow seeds worth sowing, but my expectation is that it won’t happen overnight and will require some hard work and even monotony .
