This is 30

So, this is 30!

Whenever I was younger I thought people who were 30 were sooo old, like their life is already half over. 😳😂

As I was nearing this birthday, I did think about it a lot. How I felt about turning 30. How I felt for not being a ‘young’ adult necessarily anymore but just a plain ‘adult’. How I would feel with a 3 at the beginning of my age versus a 2?

Then it happened. I turned 30 and guess what? I don’t feel a whole lot different.

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I actually had a harder time turning 25 than I had turning 30. I think a lot of that has to do with the growing and changes I have gone through in the last 5 years. The perspective I have gained over the last 5 years. They have definitely been the most trying of my life so far, but also in many ways the most trans-formative years so far. I’m sure there is more of that to come though.

I vividly remember one incident, around my 25th birthday. Jeff found me one day in the corner of our bedroom, sobbing. I felt so old. I felt so unaccomplished. I felt like a total failure. I felt like I wasn’t a ‘real woman’.

Through therapy, I now understand the root of all of those things a lot better. However at the time I just couldn’t see past the fact that I was already half way done my 20’s and my life did NOT look like I thought it would have or should have.

Growing up, and I think this was absolutely unintentional, however it still left a mark on me, it seemed that women who weren’t married and/or had children by the time they were 25, there was something not quite right. At least that’s the impression I had watching others get into their mid 20’s and hearing some of the whispers. ‘Why is she not settling down? She has been too picky’ etc, etc. For women who had in fact already found that special someone the whispers were more like ‘do you think the plumbing works like it should? Why are they waiting so long?’

Looking back it seems so cruel to me now. Cruel to the women who loved being single, or enjoyed being just with their husband, cruel to the girls growing up hearing it. Cruel, because it set so many expectations and pressure that never should have been there in the first place.

Thanks to a whole lot of therapy and a whole lot of talking about it, I now know that life, first of all, doesn’t follow ‘my plan’. Secondly, everyone’s life looks different and we don’t all have to fit into this cookie cutter form I had imagined we should fit into growing up. Nor should we have to.

Anyway, little did I know that my life would be turned upside down (more than I thought it had already been) 10 months after my 25 birthday. It was the day we were sitting in a doctors office getting my cancer diagnosis. In that moment, all I could think about was how none of MY plans had worked out and now most likely never would. Probably the biggest part was how I wasn’t a mother yet, but also how absolutely unattainable that now seemed. I think I even talked about that in one of my very first blog posts.

It seems silly now, looking back on it, my 25th birthday I mean. Knowing what I know now. Isn’t that what people always say. ‘If I had only known what was waiting around the corner, I wouldn’t have wasted tears on such foolish thoughts and notions’.

I didn’t want to celebrate my 25th birthday. Jeff recently said that he feels guilty he didn’t organize something big for my 25th. My mom threw me a family birthday and that was kinda it. Honestly though, I didn’t want a big party. I didn’t want to be reminded of how badly I had ‘failed’. I hardly wanted to acknowledge the day.

All of which to say that this one, my 30th, was a very special birthday for me. There has been so much, I don’t want to call it ‘bad’ stuff but maybe ‘unsettling’ stuff that happened over the last 5 years, that this milestone felt like a HUGE triumph.

May 31, 2016, the day we heard the words ‘You have cancer’ is forever edged into my mind for oh so many reasons. On this particular birthday though I thought back to that day and how I didn’t think I would still be here today. Or if I would be, how I would be on my death bed saying my goodbyes.

As most people probably do when you hear a diagnosis you know little about, I started googling like crazy. When we first had suspected cancer, I had done some research, but always skipped over Medullary Thyroid Cancer because it is so incredibly rare. I just thought to myself ‘I won’t have that one, it’s rare to have cancer at my age. Let alone one that’s so rare’. Well I thought wrong didn’t I?

So sitting in the car, calling our families to tell them the news, I am also frantically trying to learn as much as possible about this disease. Trying to figure out what the next steps would look like, what my life expectancy would be. Because MTC is so rare, there wasn’t a whole lot of studies published that were newer than 10-20 years. Based on that information available, I came to one scary conclusion. ‘I will be dead in 5-10 years at the most’.

Motherhood basically became a ‘yea never gonna happen for me’. In that moment basically everything I had hoped and dreamed of was washed away by those 3 words.

Yet, here we are 4 and a bit years later and I am not only alive, but I would say I am thriving. 🙂 With a little one on the way to make it a full triumph. Truly a triumph of what God can do and has done in my life.

Just over a month and a half ago when I celebrated my birthday (slightly different than I imagined it, I might add. Thanks COVID) it was truly a celebration. I felt so loved and incredibly blessed.

It was a celebration of the last 30 years, but also so much hope for the next, however many, years.

If you have been following my story, THANK YOU.

For the support, the encouragement and the countless and countless of prayers that have been brought to the throne of God on mine and Jeff’s behalf.

Thank you also to my family for throwing me an amazing social distancing birthday party!! 🥳🥳

Most importantly though, thanks be to God for leading us in every decision we have had to make, the doctors who have been on my case and leading to the right answers.

Here is to my 31st year. One that promises to be one of the more interesting ones, with many changes and probably huge learning curves.