Goodbye Twenties, Hello Thirties

-

Today, I embrace my 30s and say goodbye to my 20s. I think it's pretty cool that my 30th fell on 1-11-11. It's going to be a good decade, right? In honor of going "over the hill," I decided to sort of revamp my post at the beginning of 2010. It's amazing how many life-changing events occurred in my 20s. I guess this is the decade when we really "grow up." Here are the amazing milestones I have conquered in my 20s.

1. I toured Israel.
2. I graduated college.
3. I got my first teaching job.
4. I discovered freelance writing.
5. I got married to my best friend and moved to Rockford.
6. We bought our first house.
7. We had two beautiful children.
8. I had my first major surgery (c-section with Megan).
9. I traveled to the island of Guam (farther than I have ever gone, and probably the farthest I ever will go).
10. We made the hard decision to leave on church and join Heritage Baptist Church. It was very much the right thing for our family. God has blessed.
11. I discovered FACEBOOK!
12. I learned what it really means to be an adult (can't I go back to being 13 and having the biggest problem in my life being my frizzy hair and the fact that so-and-so didn't want to sit by me at lunch?)
13. I lost two grandparents - the first close loved ones I have lost.
14. I spent my first time in the ER with my child - an experience I don't wish to repeat but probably will someday.
15. My oldest child asked Christ to be her Savior.
16. I participated in my first ever 5k and ran a full mile for the first time in my life (still working on the running the full 5k bit.)
16. I learned what true grief is and how it can age and change you. I still miss my baby.

Through it all, the good and the bad, God has been faithful, as He promises to be. He has taught me, stretched me, humbled me, and hopefully changed me. I am ready to head toward the next "hill" with gusto and faith.

Comments

Unknown said…
what an encouragement you are to me Nicole. I appreciate your insight and want to warn you that even the decade of the 30's I still didn't feel like a grown up I am not sure if I even do now :-)

Love you
January 12, 2011 at 7:59 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Hard Questions

-
Today, we were in the car and Natalie was listening to some Christian music. She blurted out, "I don't want to go to Heaven!" What? You heard that right. I said a quick prayer for wisdom, turned the music off, and asked why. N: "I don't know, I just don't" M: "Are you afraid ?" N: "I don't know." M: "Are you afraid because you don't want to die?" (For some strange, creepy reason, my child is obsessed with death and dying) N: "Yes, I don't want to die." M: "Well, most people don't want to die, but when we die if Jesus is our saviour, we go to heaven. There are mansions there, which are like beautiful palaces (remember, princess mode here), and Jesus is there and we can see what God looks like." N: "I don't want to go there Mommy! I don't want to die!" I tried hard to assure her that unless God had another plan, she wasn't going to die for a really long time, and when
Read more

My Story Begins

-
Image
I am participating in a really fun project that is the brainchild of my friend Janna, who regularly blogs at The Adventure of Motherhood . Her project, entitled Mommy's Piggy Tales , encourages moms to blog about their childhood in 15 weeks. Here is the button if you want to learn more or consider joining. My dad, my mom, and me. My daughter, N, has that quilt now. Every year for Christmas my brother and I received our very own holiday ornament. Starting with the “Baby’s First Christmas” ornament, these ornaments usually reflected something we accomplished or did during the soon-to-be-past year. For example, the year I got my driver’s license, my ornament was Daffy Duck in a shiny new car. Every year we enjoyed putting “our” ornaments on the tree. It was a wonderful time to reflect back over our lives and the memories we had made. Sometimes we asked the reason behind the ornament, and learned a little more about our histories. When I married, I got a box with my ornaments in it to
Read more

Christmas Miracle

-
Image
Natalie was hamming it up for Tim the other night. Well, a lot has been going on in the past two months. About a month or so after the miscarriage, I was noticing something wasn't quite as it should be. I took a pregnancy test, and it came back positive. That was strange to me, because we were trying to prevent that as requested by the doctor. They called me in for blood work, and everything was indicating that I was pregnant. I was quite confused, as you can probably imagine. Two weeks ago we went in to have an ultrasound. That was eight weeks after the miscarriage. In that ultrasound they found what appeared to be a baby developing at 5 weeks gestation. We were quite perplexed, of course, because in our minds it should be about 8 weeks. The doctor asked us to come back today because at 7 weeks they should be able to see a heartbeat. The doctor said there was a good chance that there were just leftovers in there because of the earlier miscarriage, but that my numbers (hormone leve
Read more