Birthday Eve Musings

Today is my birthday eve and tomorrow starts my last year of being a thirty-something.  In all honesty, I always thought when I was little that thirty was old and forty was ancient.  But, as I look at 366 more days before my decade digit changes, I feel younger than I did ten years ago.  Maybe it is wisdom from age, maybe it is quality of life, maybe there is truth to the media claims that "forty is the new twenty!"  Whatever it is, I have been blessed in the last ten years in ways that I could have never guessed or predicted.  In fact, if a fortune teller had told me where I would be at the edge of my 39th birthday, I would have laughed her away.

At the precipice of turning 29 I was married with two small children, living in a tract home in Boiling Springs, SC waiting to start my first teaching job less than a month later.  I had started a list of "40 things to do before I turned 40" and thought whole-heartedly I would achieve maybe one or two, if any of them, but it was fun to dream.  Ten years, one move to a new city, one divorce, a fabulous remarriage and here I am......married, with two nearly grown (one just graduated, the other just turned official teenager) children, living in a beautiful home in a historic Columbia neighborhood with a second home at the beach (from where I am currently writing) and one month from tomorrow I start my TENTH year of teaching.

As for my list, well, I still have a year to go, but I have accomplished quiet a few things that were on there.  Some were so silly that now they seem unimportant.  But some are just to important to forgo for another ten years.  For example, learning to swim.  It is on my list, but I have never gotten around (or gotten up the nerve!) to signing up for lessons.  I started those this morning!!  Here are a few others that I truly thought I would NEVER do, but since 29 (although most were very recent and in the last year or two) have done.

* Get published.  I had an article published in a 2007 edition of HomeLife Magazine.
*Get a tattoo.  Yep, I did it.  A small little lady bug in a place that is hidden!
*Get a passport.  AND, get it stamped.  Got the passport and I will get my 5th stamp in two weeks when I travel to the Dominican Republic (see next bullet.  The other four stamps were to Costa Rica, Bahamas, Mexico and, my favorite, Nicaragua!)
*Go on a Mission Trip.  I leave on Saturday the 28th for a week trip to La Urena, Dominican Republic to work at an orphanage there!
*Go to NYC.  I will be there the week following the Dominican!
*Keep some sort of journal.  I have kept a blog continually for all 10 years.

Those are just a few for now as I reflect.  And, in case you are wondering, I have already started my list of 50 things to do before I turn 50.  However, to show how much our culture has changed in ten years: instead of writing them in my journal, I have them "pinned" on a board on Pinterest!  I will be so curious to see how I keep up with my "60 before 60"!