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...of a new decade

 *Note: I have linked this post UP!  I thought it would be fun to reference some of the events and experiences I talk about.  Feel free to click through... or not.  Some are short, some are long (coughbirthstoriescough).  Some are relevant, some are not.  Just a warning.*

As of tomorrow I will be three decades old.  Decades sound long.  The number three does not.  That's kind of how I feel about it all.  I feel like there is so much that I've been through in life, so many memories and moments, but when I really think about it, I don't feel very old.  Sometimes I still have moments when I'm rocking my very large kid to sleep and I feel small and young - like a college student pretending to be a mother.  Is that bad?  I guess I can't see why it would be.

My 20's were marked by drastic changes.  A LOT happened in the last ten years.  I mean, I'm literally a whole new person.  The biggest change being the reality of my depravity and my need for Jesus as my savior and my desire to want to worship Him and follow Him with everything that I have.  I've known Him and the Good News of what God did for me since I was... well, as far back as I can remember.  But it didn't hit my heart and change my life until this last decade.

I used to want to be an actress.  A famous one.  Not just the honorable kind that does projects that have integrity and are at least mildly redeeming, but doesn't care if people recognized me at the grocery store.  No, I wanted to be recognized and I wanted to win Oscars and have lots of money.  I wanted that from the time I was 8 until I was about 23.  My teenage years were marked with crushes on boys, but no boyfriends and only an intense focus of my goal of  "becoming famous". Of course, I never would have put it in those words at the time.  But that was it. Now, I know many actors, who studied along side me at Pepperdine, who are continuing to pursue a career in film and television.  They've persevered and I didn't and I believe it's because  my motives were so very selfish and so very shallow. My wonderful friends are incredible people who love the Lord and know that, for various reasons, that is the career path He has given them.  I discovered around the age of 23, that it was not mine and He had very different plans for my life.

I can't even begin to recount the eventfulness of my 20s. A long story short would be that I moved to Austin from Los Angeles, still hoping to pursue a career in acting. But The Lord used my first wonderful church home to reveal to me more about Himself and what He wanted me to do with my life.  It was at that church that God brought Quinn and I together.  I cannot adequately describe in words what a gift from God that man has been to me.  He has loved me and continues to love me, even when I know I make it very hard.  He has always encouraged me to pursue Jesus before anything else.  He gently reproves me and holds me accountable.  He leads me wonderfully and humbly and so lovingly and I cannot believe that I have only known him for less than seven years.

There was a stint of three years in that decade that I spent as a high school theatre teacher.  I have no doubt that God had that perfectly planned for me.  It was the longest, hardest, most tiring, and most rewarding paying job I've ever and probably will ever have.  I decided that I couldn't keep doing it even before we found out we were going to have Abram.  I admire and am in awe of my teacher friends who have figured out how to graciously balance investing in their students' lives while still being incredible mothers, fathers, husbands, and wives.  I couldn't do it. So I gave it up for the most rewarding paid or unpaid job I will ever have: being a mother.

Abram Quinn has spent the last two years of this decade of my life teaching me about God's love for me through my love for that adorable, rowdy, loving, smart, sinful, precious boy.  I've learned so much through him and my sweet, incredible little Selah about the purity of God's love for me.  Having children is such an amazing picture God gives us for His love for us as our father, just like marriage is the best picture He has given us of his love for us as His bride.  It isn't until the children hit the age (for mine, it was about one year) when you see that you still love them just as much when they begin to disobey, talk back, hit, kick, become defiant, throw fits, and are overall just plain unreasonable.  I image that having a teenager helps complete that picture, but two years old is a good start.  I love my kids more and more every day and God uses that love to strengthen my love for Him daily as well.

So now, I am on the verge of beginning my fourth decade of life (ok, that makes me feel old).  Not only have we just moved across the world to a completely foreign country where I don't know the language but we are helping to do something I never thought I would be doing (click here if you want to know more about that).  God is teaching me every day that, while I feel like my role as a mother will now and forever be my most important one, in actuality it is simply to love Him with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love others as myself.  If that comes first for the rest of my life, it will completely inform my role as a mother and make me the best one that I can possibly be - not of my own strength or intelligence (or I would fail miserably) - but by the power of Jesus, His Spirit in me and the work He did for me on the cross.  What better birthday present could a girl ask for?

Now for some recent pictures of my other wonderful gifts:
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Look how far I've come:
Thank you Dad and Mom.  You deserve more credit for this day than I do :)  Love you guys.





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