30, Flirty, and Thriving?

Well, it was my 30th birthday. It feels a bit anti-climactic. For the last few months I have been worried about whether or not I have accomplished anything important in my life up to this point. I don't have a husband or kids, a completed college education, or even a fulfilling career. I am 30 and still living with my parents, that sounds terrible! Certainly not the milestones that I thought I "should" have by now.

I have been feeling especially pensive today, analyzing my life. I don't have all of the normal things, any of the "normal" things really. But maybe for me, what I have is better.

Living with my parents and brothers again has been a wonderful opportunity to enjoy the company of my brothers, Christopher especially and to make sure that my dad is getting some food that tastes good and is relatively healthy. Even Ryan and I get along fairly well, which never happened growing up!

I was able to live with and love a little boy for a several months several years ago; it seems like a lifetime ago. Sometimes I wonder if he will be the only child I get mother. I miss him terribly! I wonder if he knows how much I love him, have loved him since he was 3 months old. I wonder if his mother knows how much I still love her for sharing her son with me, even for a little while. Being with him was one of the best times of my life.

I spent a very long five years getting two associate degrees. It was a challenge and I still have two more years plus a math class to go. It is discouraging that it has taken so long. Going to Texas is foremost on my mind. I would love to go to so many other places and Texas is the best school and coincidentally, where I feel I need to be. There are radiation therapy programs all across the country and the one I want to go is in the "armpit of Texas" - Houston. Yuck! At least I can be closer to my sister, Kim down there (and my future niece/nephew next year). That is the one consolation. Hopefully I get accepted again so that can go next year.

I have felt the presence of angels, seen and unseen, mortal and not. This happened when I was so feeling so tired and overwhelmed by life or when guiding me over a dangerous snowy mountain pass. They have helped me in my school work and to reach out to people in need. They have especially helped me to continue doing what was right when logic told me it was wrong.

I have worked in a hospital setting and found myself relishing the opportunity to serve and care for people who are hurting or scared. I was actually surprised to find that I was good at it. (My dad wasn't.)

I have fallen in love...with my iPod. :) It has been a personal Liahona, a way for the Lord to speak to me possibly hundreds of times. Jeffrey R. Holland is a personal favorite, he has his own playlist. My family teases me that I would give my dad my child to watch, but not my iPod - it doesn't heal like a child. As many know, though, I am harder on iPods than anyone I know. Three just turned one year old; One drowned and Two got tired and had two batteries and finally wore out. He, (they are always "he") goes everywhere I go. I usually fall sleep listening to him. One is framed and used to sit on my mantle, back when I had a mantle.

In the past 30 years, and more particularly in the last six, I have had my testimony grow in leaps and bounds and then had it crumble, once almost into dust. I have tried to go inactive so many times I lost count. Every time I told the Lord, "this is the last time" something would touch my heart and make me feel that all the things I once knew to be true still were. I finally realized, only recently, that I think I have always known the church was true, have known it since before I was born.

I know many times over the last 6 years I have tried to go down a different path but I didn't feel good about so many of the options that I had to choose from or the path I chose was blocked. The journey I have traveled has not been what I wanted, but maybe it was the best one for me. I have learned so much about what I am capable of doing. And the people I have met along the way, wow! I have had some truly wonderful experiences with people - friends, something that I didn't know how badly I needed.

While "30, Flirty, and Thriving" as a friend told me today, is not exactly how I would describe myself, maybe that is okay. Maybe I am okay just the way I am.