Better than the Last

This is a big year for me. I'm turning...30. Yikes. It should be scary, but it's more surreal than anything. I was only 20 yesterday, right? Where has the last decade gone? Seriously. The other night, I was watching a Friends episode (big surprise, huh?) where Rachel was turning 30 & not handling it with a lot of grace. The group tried to console her by recalling their own bad experiences from when they turned 30. While funny, it only made her less ready to leave her twenties. All she could focus on was the fact that she hadn't accomplished anything she wanted to. She hadn't gotten married, had kids, achieved all of her career goals...sound familiar? Are there things in your life that you haven't seen come to pass? Maybe things that you thought would have happened by now. I know that's definitely true for me.

Recently, it seemed that a couple of major things that I've been waiting on were actually beginning to come to fruition. It was exciting...until I realized that they were in fact, not. I think what was more disappointing than those "particular" circumstances not working out, was the fact that I thought they were going to. Ever been there? Maybe you didn't get a job you were hoping for, a big promotion at work, or perhaps, something even bigger. I'm very familiar with being in that place. Now, I have to choose to either keep moving forward and believe that God has even better plans in store for my life or give up on my dreams because of discouragement. The logical and right choice is the first. But it seems that, at times, the easier choice is the latter. Why? Because it's always easier to choose defeat rather than victory. Victory takes work, a lot of prayer, and it most certainly doesn't choose us. Yes, Christ died to give us victory, but we have to grab hold of it. We have to choose it. We have a choice every day to believe that God desires the best for us and we're on a journey toward that. Even when it appears that the opposite is true and that our journey has taken many detours. Sometimes more than we'd like!

I don't know what this next decade will look like for me, but I want it to be better than the last. And, I know that I can determine that in part. And the rest, I have to entrust with the Lord. So, here's praying and believing that my thirties will be better, so much better, than my twenties!