On Turning Thirty

I am 30 today. It’s kind of a relief to finally be here after dreading it so long. My family and I had just a little celebration on Sunday that included some lovely cheesecake, lots of smiles, and a fun game.

Now that I’m to this particular life milestone (anyone know why it’s a milestone exactly, other than that it’s the entry into a new decade?), I’m finding myself a little reflective. Have I done everything that I should have done in my 20s?

Well, that answer is complicated. I actually think that I have. I went to college and had a little fun—the fun was much neglected due to the pursuit of a degree, but I find the more educated I become, the greater is my capacity to have fun, so I don’t feel anymore that I missed too much—I came back to my home state and realized how much I love it; I worked a lot of different (some good, some awful) jobs, including a receptionist in a pool supply warehouse, an assistant editor, a content editor, a bookseller, a substitute teacher, an instructional aide, a loan application call center specialist, a seamstress, and a teacher; I learned how to make friends (unfortunately, I really did have to learn that, because I didn’t know how to during childhood and adolescence); served an LDS mission; got a teaching certificate and taught middle school for four years; had a variety of church responsibilities; almost finished a master’s degree; and I even wrote a novel—never mind that I decided later that I hated it and began to rewrite it—it was finished and it was the child of my very own brain.

So the question now is what comes next? I never thought I would do a lot of the things I have done in the previous decade, and if I had planned my life out, it would have turned out entirely different. But here are some of my hopes and dreams for the decade of my 30s. Maybe they’re more cautious hopes, and maybe they’re more daring. I would like, first, to finish my master’s degree (just 6 more hours!) and get a job in a school library. I do want to continue writing, and I would like to finish a book series I’ve started. I want to become more kind, more thoughtful, more caring, and more faithful. I want to be a diligent scholar of the scriptures. I want to travel to a foreign country again; yeah, I did it once in my teens and once in my twenties, and I want to do it in my 30s as well. And I want to get married. That has always been on my list of things I want to do, of course, but this time I feel … oh, I don’t know. When I was 20, I was confident that some dreamy young man would sail into my life and sweep me off my feet, that we would get married, and I would spend the rest of my life as his wife and the mother of his children. Now, I still think in similar terms, only I’m jaded and my expectations are at the same time simpler and more complicated. I don’t want to have ten children anymore, but I do want children and I want to be the best mother I can be. And I want to be a good wife, including but much beyond being a fantastic cook (it’s true), a good doer of laundry, a smart manager of finances, and all those other homey, wifely skills. I’ll have to do all of those things extremely well to make up for all the trouble I’ll cause him. Hehe.

But all that aside, because it’s not something I can make happen all by myself, there are not as many things I want to do as things I want to become, and the desires of my heart, at the core, have not changed much between 20 and 30. I still want to do everything I can to please the Lord, to become like Him. I still want to be a blessing to the people around me, whether they are the family I was born into, or the family I create with a future spouse. In other words, I feel at 30 a lot like I did at 20, only less stupid. But then, when I was 20 I thought I was pretty wise and smart. Little did I know then … little do I know now.


So, I’ve been there and done the pity party already, and I’ve decided that it’s time for it to be over for good. What’s the point in always looking at what I’ve missed, rather than what I’ve had? Not to sound vain or proud, but my life has been pretty extraordinary, and I’ve been blessed to be able to do a lot of things I never imagined I would. No comparisons with other people are necessary here, because who really cares what other people have done? It really only matters what I have done, and I have done a lot of good things. I can say, with a little confidence and a lot of hope, that the world is a better place for having had three decades of me.