thirty years in the making

Today I blow the virtual dust off roxblurb to reflect on a milestone. While I am still trying to absorb the shock I thought it might be therapeutic to share the news that this week I turned thirty years old.

I’m just taking a moment to let that sink in.

Thirty.

I can no longer say I am in my twenties; I have almost been out of school longer than I was in it; and I think I might actually be starting to look my age. *gasp*

Such an occasion calls for some serious musing and this is what I have been doing over the course of the last week. Being faced with the prospect of a whole new decade has the potential to provoke anxiety about the unstoppable nature of time but I must say I’m feeling quite content at this point in my life. I’m thankful for my wonderful husband, we have a fantastic community of people around us, I am three months away from completing my degree and I have a lunatic of a dog who sleeps on my head at night. What more could I want?!

Yet I know that I am blessed and fortunate and the things I regularly take for granted are the very things that millions of people around the world lack. I was born into privilege and I had no say about that. What I can control is what I do with that.

Over the course of the last few years I have felt a real stirring to stop ignoring the 25% of the world who suffer on a daily basis. I have come to realise that life is far more satisfying when I am focussing away from my own little world and looking further afield to where I can make a difference. So, that is what I plan to do with the rest of the life, whatever that may look like.

I feel incredibly grateful for the way in which my faith - sometimes strong and at other times weak - has carried me through plenty of upheaval and been the reason for much delight over the last three decades. It is everything to me. It is who I am.

With all its ups-and-downs, excitement and boredom, joy and pain, if the last thirty years are anything to go by, and variety truly is the spice of life, the coming years are set to be taaaaast-y! Many people have told me that the thirties are good because you finally discover who you are. I can't say I turned thirty and all of sudden I realised who I am meant to be; that has been thirty years in the making.