40? yes, 40

i'm sitting at a cafe, taking some time for myself (thank you very much husband) and making up for the fact that last week, on my actual birthday, i was stuck in bed with a terrible flu. every year on my birthday i try to go and spend some time on my birthday working on a list of goals for the year. i used to write a goal for each year of my life- yes, as in this year i would write 40 goals. i really don't think i thought it through all the way way back in the day that the older i got the more goals i'd be creating for myself. hmmm. so i haven't counted the goals i came up with this time, but here's a snippet of a few of them:

less: phone use, sugar, procrastinating, time wasting, aimless internet wandering, dairy and bread (yes cheese and baguette- i'm talking to you sweet soulmates), criticizing, mom-voice, mindless tv

more: blogging, moving (in the forms of running, walking, interval training), playing, active listening, drawing, from-scratch cooking, veggies, writing snail mail, snuggling, imagining, volunteering, sunscreen, reading for pleasure, podcasts, friend time

i am still sitting with the fact that i have slowly but surely tiptoes into a new decade of life. i was thinking about how the last days of my 20's and my 30th birthday were spent in the hospital with my friend who was fighting leukemia. ten years later she is healthy and thriving. since then i have begun and finished grad school, made a bazillion cards for papyrus, started a blog, become a pastor's wife (at least my own version of that), moved from my parents house to a place of our own to a house that we bought, had two beautiful and amazing daughters, weathered the loss of my dad and the implosion of our family unit as we all knew it, made new friends (and kept the old too), shared so many moments with people i love. what will the next ten years hold? i can hardly imagine. 

hopefully more courage and beauty and goodness.

less fear.