30 is my year

Several months before my 30th birthday, I found myself in a rut. I felt like the world was moving along & I was standing still. I was unsure of myself in almost every aspect of my life and unhappy in that frame of mind. Then a couple weeks before I turned 30, I took stock of my life. People tell you to do that from time to time, but I always thought it was some new age mumbo jumbo & didn't give it much thought beyond that. However, I had noticed my thoughts & feelings changing about a lot of things and knew it was time to change right along with it. After a lot of soul searching and talking to others older & wiser than myself, I discovered that I was being given an opportunity to turn a new leaf and pull myself out of the funk I had been surviving in for so long. I can't say where the changes began, but I can tell you that if you roll with the tide, it is well worth the growing pains.

I am only 2 months into my 30s but I am not the person I was at 29. I know that sounds insane & it may not have as much to do with my age as it does the circumstances in my life, but it seems more than a little coincidental that these life changes would occur at the exact time that I hit a milestone birthday. I know a big shift came in the form of a promotion. It's not like I'm so stinkin' important now but work had been stale for many years. I didn't want to work anywhere else so I stuck it out without much thought to where I was going. Then this promotion was dropped in my lap and I knew it was time for me to prove myself and get out of my comfort zone. Simultaneously, I came to the conclusion that a second pregnancy just isn't going to happen for me. I learned acceptance, which is no small feat for me!! I have always wanted a gaggle of babies running around, especially being married to a man who is an amazing father and someone I would love to experience pregnancy with. Like all other life lessons, this one took awhile to break through my thick skull and now that I have come to accept the way it is, I'm a much happier person. Once I made peace with that, I had to do something about my health. From the outside I'm simply losing weight. But this change has very little to do with vanity and everything to do with happiness. I was unhappy with my body and with my already weak self-esteem, I was bordering on self-loathing, which is very dangerous territory for anyone, let alone a clinically depressed person such as myself. Now I'm almost 4 months into my healthier lifestyle and I'm down 18 pounds. But what I've lost in pant sizes, I've gained in emotional stability & well-being. In the midst of all this growth, I also decided it was time to reinforce the positive aspects of my marriage. I have recently seen a lot of marriages fall apart or nearly fall apart and knowing how rare and beautiful the relationship Justin & I have is, I didn't want to wait for things to go bad before making them better. In strengthening our marriage, we're also strengthening our entire family unit and giving Trinity a healthy example for when she is older and starts having relationships of her own. All of these things have tied together in ways I never thought they would and it has been quite an experience to witness.

Work has been a little more stressful than normal in the last 3-4 weeks and I've let it push me back a few steps. I knew these challenges would come b/c nothing is ever effortless. (If it were, we wouldn't appreciate the triumph as much.) The biggest backslide was in my exercise; something that I can't afford to falter on b/c it has so many mental benefits. Yesterday I jumped head-first back into my routine. With all this 30-year-old wisdom (that was sarcastic, btw), I know that small step will soon positively influence every other aspect of my life. I am starting to see that every seemingly trivial movement plays a part in another, bigger movement. The day that I stop striving for something better is the day that I die. I know how trite it sounds, but life really is a journey, not a destination. I am not working toward a stopping point, I'm working onward & upward with no foreseeable end. The more I learn, the better I feel. And if I feel this good at 30, I can't wait to see 40!!