I’m 37. In a few months I will be 38.

Looking back at life over my 30’s life has changed in vast ways. For some reason I’ve been thinking about my 29th birthday. We still had no child, we still lived in Detroit, and we were on the verge of some really big stuff that we had no idea was coming.

I remember the card my wife gave me for my 29th birthday. It was a card she made. She cut the numbers 2 and 9 out of orange paper that had the texture of a basketball, then glued them to a piece of folded card stock. I also remember that she bought me a game boy advance for that 29th birthday, and I had to wrestle it free from it’s evil molded plastic packaging. I was also about 40 pounds fatter than I am right now, but that’s off topic.

Now that I am sort of looking back down the road since the big 3-0. Life came crashing into us. I wonder if the thirties are like this for everybody. Joy, hope, turmoil, community, despair, fear, redemption, restoration these are all adjectives that are descriptors of the last (almost) 8 years of our lives.

I mean really amazing crazy life just seemed to materialize.

We moved to Philadelphia about 3 weeks before I turned 30. I have watched my baby become a little girl. My marriage (of 7 years at the time) nearly collapsed. We discovered deep meaningful and engaging friendships. My faith became real to me. I got hit by a car (which resulted in 4 new teeth, a broken nose, elbow, and shoulder). My Marriage was restored. We lost a baby to miscarriage. I found out that walking with Jesus is not a campy, happy existence, and that figuring out this journey of being a real person and trying to be someone who wants to follow Jesus is complicated. I’ve had to deal with real life regarding finances, health issues, family problems etc. I’m not saying that I have been dealt a bum deal...don’t take that away from this. I’m just saying that I’ve had to engage in life experiences that I wasn’t expecting. Some have been amazing and life giving. Some have been scary shit that nothing can prepare you for, and they have all transpired since I turned 30. Things that simply in my 20’s never even occurred to me that I would ever have to deal with.

And now

I sit, poised to make another giant move forward in life, not knowing what to expect. Just as I have settled into loving where am, and who I am, and who I am riding this journey with, here we go kicking it up another notch. Forty is just around the corner. I’m not overly concerned about being forty or turning forty, but I wonder what that decade is going to bring with it. It’s going to bring adolescence into our home, and climax with a high school graduation. Wow. To think...just a decade ago we had no kid, but a decade from now she will be graduating from high school. But what else?

I do know this without question.

God brought us here with purpose. We were supposed to be in Philadelphia to weather the storms and breath new life. I have no doubt in my mind. Jesus drew us to the place where we belonged. So where He’s taking me, is where I want to be.

The wind is kicking up outside my window. It is supposed to pour tonight and all day tomorrow. I am wrapped up in my bed with a blanket nice and warm...thinking about the storm coming our way...and for the goodness it will will bring in it’s wake.