I really was dreading this day.
A year ago at this time, I was all caught up in the fact that I wasn’t married yet. That I didn’t have any kids yet. That I didn’t own a home, and I still had like a bazillion dollars in student loans, and sometimes the timing of my bills would work out so that my cable would get shut off for a few days each month.
And I was feeling like I hadn’t done nearly enough in the three decades of my life to deserve the milestone that is 30.
But then.
And everything changed.
Six months ago, I woke up feeling like I had a broken rib.
As one of my friends described it, it was if a tornado came down and destroyed everything, and I was left to pick up the pieces.
Suddenly, all the things I thought I needed didn’t matter at all anymore, and I was just trying to survive.
Suddenly, I was having days where the pain was so horrible that living through a single hour was an incredible accomplishment.
And making it through the night without killing myself was a huge win.
The new pain also came with very demanding limits.
No longer could I push my self to the brink of exhaustion to get everything done. No longer could I stay up all night to finish planning for the youth group, and then work at the church for 13 hours on a Sunday, and then wake up Monday morning, drive 1.5 hours to work, do my other job all day, drive 1.5 hours home, read a week’s worth of Bible study homework in a couple hours, and then spend 2.5 hours in Disciple class, then go home and wake up and drive 1.5 hours to work again.
Nope. Not anymore.
Now, just getting through a one-hour youth group service on Sunday mornings meant that I had to go lay on a couch for 30 minutes to re-group.
And if for some crazy reason, I did try to push myself past my body’s new limits, I would end up in bed for two or three days unable to function because of insane amounts of pain.
So everything changed.
And suddenly, so did my perspective.
As recently as last Friday, I seriously thought I was going to die. But I didn’t.
I’m here. Alive. Celebrating 30 years on this planet.
I may not have a husband, or kids or a white picket fence thingy. I may have just quit one of my jobs and moved in with mom. And, I may have only done five of the 14 things on this list of things I wanted to do before I turned 30.
But I can breathe. And, thanks to the miracle that is hydrocodone, sometimes it doesn’t even hurt that much when I do it.
So yay for 30. I’m just happy to be here.