On the eve of my thirties, reflection takes hold. There will always be moments in our lives where we come to this crossroads—major milestones, birthdays, new years, new decades, the birth of a child—but this one feels more significant than others I’ve experienced. Tomorrow I turn 30, and although I’ve been figuring life out as an adult for a while, there’s a sense of certainty and ambition and fondness that comes with leaving a decade behind and entering into a new one.
A decade ago, I was entering into my sophomore year of college. That girl was about to enter into a deep depression as August rolled around. She would wander wild within her life, far from God and lost in a wood of her own making. It’s hard to believe that the last time I beckoned forth a new decade—my twenties—I was fresh-faced, free from adult woes, and still relying on my teenage metabolism. But even then, I was still a young woman who honestly didn’t care what happened to her. She made choices out of her need for acceptance and love, and held onto that need so tightly that she was bound to it. She lived without purpose and struggled to find her place in this world.
But as my twenties roared on, I began to see the purpose that God had given me and the Light took hold. I transferred schools. I joined a sorority. I graduated college and then graduated with my first Master’s degree. I found Jesus and Christian community within my local church. I began volunteering within student ministry and the worship team. I was called to Seminary and completed a second Master’s. By my mid-twenties, I had already turned my life around from the person I was at the on-set. While all of this formation took place, the second half of my twenties would really be where the changes were almost overwhelming.
At twenty-five, I moved to Texas. I had my first job in ministry. I got engaged and then married within five months. We moved cities and apartments. I started my blog and this writing journey was born. Wesley was born (overdue a bit traumatically), followed by a long season of postpartum and new motherhood. We moved again and joined a church and found a community to be part of. I was a stay-at-home mom for two years and went back to work. We bought a house, and now I’m here on the last day of being 29.
Within each of these life-defining and trajectory-changing moments, God gave me opportunities to serve him and to grow. Unlike the twenty-year-old me who was lost in the woods and struggling to survive, I invited those walks between the pines because I knew that they would only shape me. They would form me into the person God wanted me to become: focused wholeheartedly upon him and what he has for me and continuing to learn how to follow him in my life. While twenty-year-old me ran from hardship and only sought personal pleasures and loves, thirty-year-old me will embrace trials and seek what will glorify God and what is of his will.
And that’s probably how I would sum up the years of my twenties: Adventures, challenges, rough and easy terrain that have formed me into a person of open-handedness toward the things of God and what he will do in my life. I seek simplicity and I long to experience life and embrace it fully. Twenty-year-old Lauren could never.
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On the eve of my 30th birthday, I want to thank each of you who is reading this for supporting me in my writing journey. It’s because of you that I create these words and take the time to do what I do. I’m excited to walk into my thirties with you backing me. Twenty-year-old me was a young woman who had no community and was lost within her own wilderness. But because of God’s grace and abundance, my readers, my family, my church community, and every other person who genuinely cares that I exist, I’m walking into a new decade with a profound sense of gratitude and love. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank you for sharing your words not only today but every day!