Thoughts on Thirty [Escaping Expectations]

I wrote the initial draft of this post two years ago on my birthday. I revisited it this year, and it still resonated. May it encourage you today to release expectations and enjoy whatever season of life you are in.

I turned the “big” 3-0 this week.

Even typing that sentence brings up a myriad of emotions. What is it about a milestone birthday that brings up all the things?

Early this month, as the big day was fast approaching I couldn’t help but feel anxious and old (yes, everyone older than 30 can roll their eyes…haha), but upon further reflection, I realized what was really causing the unrest was my self-imposed expectations.

When we were teenagers, my sisters and I loved to play the age game —
“When you’re twenty, I’ll be seventeen and she’ll be fourteen…”when you’re THIRTY, I’ll be twenty-seven and she’ll be twenty-four…”

Naturally this game usually divulged into what milestones we would have accomplished before said age. Since my parents were married at twenty-two and twenty-three, we obviously would be married by that age as well. We would wait a few years, then have all our kids before thirty (we didn’t want to be “old” parents after all). Then we would all just live happily ever after in houses right next door to our parents, our kids would frolic from one house to another, and life would be grand! 😉

I’m not sure what world we were living in, but I am grateful for the innocence of youth, for the privilege we had that allowed us to dream like that, for the love filled childhood that made us want to recreate that feeling for our own families. As I approached this big birthday though, I realized a part of me hadn’t given up those expectations I self-imposed. Despite all I have been privileged to accomplish, for the love Russell and I have found, for all my family being healthy and around me — I thought it wasn’t enough — that I should have, could have done more…but I was wrong.

Wrong to place those expectations on myself.

Wrong to think there’s only one timeline for life (don’t miss it!)

Wrong to grasp for control in areas where I don’t have any

Wrong to forget the immense blessing it is to be gifted thirty whole years of life

And with those realizations, my perspective shifted. It’s funny how gratefulness does that, right? I see patients every day that won’t have thirty years, I meet people in the hospital whose loved ones never even saw twenty-five, yet here I am, surrounded by family and friends whose love and kindness are more than I could have ever imagined all those years ago, and I breathe in the blessings surrounding me and exhale the expectations, the pressures, the desire for control. I breathe in thankfulness for thirty whole years and exhale the fears and worries of the next decade. I breathe in joy for the privilege I have to even examine these feelings, to sort them, to reflect and I exhale…

ready for what the next decade brings.