thirty

wow.  a new decade.  i haven't seen the start of one of these since i was..um...nineteen-turning-twenty.  let me say again, wow.  a lot has changed since then.

as previously mentioned in my lamenting about the mayhem that was my graduation from residency (read: partially ruined by missing camera, crashed car, and no get-pretty prep time), i like to take these moments to pause.  i think we don't spend enough time really evaluating where we are now, how we got here, and where we want to be.  so today, before the day gets away from me, i want to pause and remember the decade that i just finished.  you only get, what, seven...eight...nine if you're lucky?  here's my third decade in a nutshell: the good, the hard, and the miraculous.

the good: i graduated college after spending a year learning that it's really ok to skip classes sometimes and that the journaling and running and musing-in-secret-spots version of me is a nice counterpart to the focused, driven, scientific version of me.  i met and dated and later got engaged to a deep, loving, insightful man in a crazy, end-of-the-year relationship that shouldn't have worked for three long-distance years. i moved to philadelphia and got my first apartment, where i started and completed medical school.  in what has been one of the best days of my life, i married the best guy i know, and we drove away beneath exploding fireworks and israel kamakawiwo'ole's 'what a wonderful world'.

the hard: first and foremost - residency.  i survived, but sometimes i didn't think i would make it.  those four years following the highs of getting married and graduating medical school were a blur of sleepless nights and missed celebrations.  through it, i learned what it means to be a doctor.  it was hard, but i'll always wear it like a badge of honor. and second - depression.  d and i truly learned what it means to be 'burned out', a lesson purchased by our lack of boundaries in full-time ministry and the unending needs of our students that we were not equipped to fill.  he went through almost a year of gray, thick, awful depression, and we took to the task of just surviving for a while.  we learned that even through our marriage has more love and support and laughter than we know what to do with, we are not exempt from having to take the "for worse" along with the "for better".  we learned, thankfully, that we have what it takes to stick together when things aren't easy.
the miraculous: i had a daughter!  the experience of being pregnant and meeting this beautiful little person who is mine to love and nurture and teach has changed everything about me.  i have never experienced such a fierce love for anything in my life. i'm pretty sure i could kill tigers with my bare hands and outrun cheetahs on the savannah if they were after her.  i used to hear the word 'mom' and think about older women in bad jeans; now i hear a sobbing 'mama' coming from our tiny nursery and feel lucky beyond belief that my bubbly blonde smarty is awake and wants to play with me.

this is me at thirty, rounding the final bend of training, ready to sign on to a practice and get my first 'real job', about to watch my daughter barrel through her own first decade of life.  sigh.  i love it.  i'm lucky.  i'm looking forward to tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.