Today is September 19^th, and I am officially 122 days away from my 40^th birthday.  HOLY COW!  As I typed that first sentence, I felt little tiny beads of perspiration begin just above the brow line.  The ever- sagging brow line…

I used to think it absurd when people obsessed over a milestone age.  I have always felt every birthday is cause for celebration, and we simply do not have enough excuses to purchase a new dress and kick up our heels.  Birthdays should be fun and give us the opportunities we crave to do exactly that…P-A-R-T-Y!  However, I began to undergo a taste of the whole idea of “crying- the- blues birthdays” when I became age 30 without having yet fulfilled a void inside of me which seemed ever important as breath.  Life is a little like riding in a speeding vehicle.  It doesn’t matter what you do, you cannot slow down.  We all seem to reach each birthday expeditiously, sometimes even screaming in horror through the ones ending in a big, fat zero.  UGH!

I am hearing more and more of the saying…”40 is the new 30.”  I’ve been spending some time “weeding” through all the nonsensical witty wordplay and ideas we buy into in order to make ourselves feel better.  I’m learning that along with so many other things in life, age is about relativity.  Most 50 year olds would love to be ten years younger, and any 60 year old regards turning 40 as a walk in the park on a beautiful, temperate, sunny day.  I’m even more so convinced that anyone of age 70 or greater would actually consider a 40 year old as a mere child.  How you feel about a specific age is relative to where you are in life.

So this brings me to some important questions only I can answer.  What do I want to do when I grow up?  What do I want my forties to mean?  Am I who I want to be at this age?  Am I who I want to be at any age?  I’ve recently read a quote stating, “Life isn’t about finding yourself; it’s about discovering who God created you to be.”  I feel certain we are all in one way or another in discovery mode.  The quickly moving vehicle of life I spoke about earlier maneuvered over quite a bumpy, pothole-covered terrain throughout most of my twenties and early thirties.  I intend on using this blog as not only an outlet to chronicle the last days of my thirties, but also  to communicate the rough road that shaped this girl, who has all of a sudden found herself standing on the doorstep of 40.  I want to share my discovery with you.  I sincerely hope you will join me…