The Big 3-0.

Today was the day. My thirtieth birthday.

Wow. Three decades. A drop in the proverbial bucket in view of eternity, but a spanse of seemingly endless years to my children. And admittedly, it feels simultaneously like an eternity and an instant.

Today was full of my favorite things. Mostly good food, good smells, good books, and my favorite people. There was pretty new dress,

cinnamon and rasin scones, blueberry pie-scented candle,

a fire going all day,

Father Brown, Brambley Hedge, and other stories I got to read to my little ones.

And my husband made me steak for dinner. He spent a week researching different methods and techniques, and I have to say, the payoff was hefty. Seared perfection! And of course the obligatory broccoli 😉

And, a lovely little birthday dessert- caramel apple dumplings.

And there were lovely gifts! Well, as a homesteader, naturally I count our new buckling Fonso.

And a grain mill! You don’t appreciate a grain mill untill you’ve ground 5 pounds of flour at a time manually.

I tell you- this is a GIFT!

And the value of these gifts is not lost on me. They enable me in different ways to serve my family well, and to assist my husband in providing for them. Everything on the homestead is functional. It has to be.

We also received the updated plat map from our property survey today (another thing I’m counting as gift), so we did a walk-about through the woods and looked at all the freshly marked boundaries. We were surprised by a lot of what we thought was our land belonging to our neighbors on the east, but on the west, what we thought belonged to our neighbor belongs to us. So everything shifted a bit.

And that’s basically how I feel about turning 30. As if everything has shifted a bit. Hormones, post-four-baby body, many of my priorities, dreams, goals. Everything has shifted. A lot, especially in the last 10 years.

And I think a lot of that comes down to simple maturity. And praise God- He has been with me through it all. Mostly, I thank God for the opportunity to live faithfully for Him another year, for the opportunity to walk in the life he’s graciously given me and to store up treasures in heaven.

The longer I live, the more I see the temporal and fleeting nature of life. The more I’m thankful for the grace of God as He mercifully forgives the foolishness of my youth, and allows me to live into maturity in the present. I think that’s probably true for most people. But rather than cling to what I know, what’s here, I find I’m growing more and more eager to be with my Heavenly Father. I want to be sanctified, and I want to walk worthy of Christ’s sacrifice- His life for mine.

This life- With the gifts of good food, good smells, good books, and my favorite people- is nothing if not a glimpse into the heavenlies. Even with it’s sorrows and griefs, it causes my eyes to swell with tears when I consider that none of the deep pains and sorrows of life were lost on my Savior. He knows them well.

As I begin my third decade on this earth, I wait with eager expectation for the Lord. And I determine in my heart to life faithfully for Him even in the mundane, the small, the unpleasant things of life. Because all of it- every breath, every second- was bought at tremendous cost. And I couldn’t ask for a better gift than that.

Funny enough, as I read my husband’s sermon for tomorrow morning, it echoed the very same sentiments. And I thank God for my husband, yet another of His good gifts to me.