There are four bright blue eggs tucked tightly in the nest that some robins built inside of an abandoned nest on our balcony. The baby birds fell out of the last nest and tumbled onto our porch, where we wrapped them in warm towels in a makeshift shelter and watched each day through the window as the mama bird nursed them back to health. They flew off a few weeks ago and now there are new eggs, robin’s egg blue and full of promise.
Today I turn thirty one, a new year, full of promise.
Thirty was an amazing year for me.
I celebrated three years of a healthy little girl and watched her become even more incredible. I found a beautiful church family. I met Jenni and ended up with a wonderful literary agent and friend. I found a home in a fabulous MOPS group. I had a little piece published in a favorite magazine. I got to be on The Today Show. I celebrated seven years of marriage on a beach getaway with my husband. I signed a two-book deal with one of my favorite publishing companies.
It was amazing and surreal.
There was hard too this year, the sharp edged stories that aren’t shared in this space because they don’t belong solely to me. This year the seasons ran together and often a time to laugh and a time to cry were the same time, all tangled together in my best friend’s living room as I poured it all out to the girls who are my family.
And sometimes the juxtaposition of the awful and the amazing all happening at once was intensely overwhelming but the truth is that the only place that a polished, perfect life exists is on a Pinterest board. Real life is messy, beautiful and flawed, but in it God is always holding out to us a garment of praise instead of despair.
And what I learned at thirty is to slip it on.
Hello, thirty one.
“Touch my silent lips oh Lord, and my mouth shall praise accord.”
(P.S. But overall AMAZING ;))
