All year long it seems I’ve been watching my old high school friends turn thirty over Instagram. They each look incredible and have cute photos in cute outfits, surrounded by equally beautiful women whose cute outfits are all various shades of the same color. Their photos look so dreamy, their lives look so fun and after watching their birthday celebrations, I feel like the most unglamorous, boring person in the universe. Perhaps this wouldn’t be on my mind so much if I, too, weren’t turning thirty but alas, here we are. I’m thirty today and that feeling of not-enoughness has been haunting me for weeks. 

I thought about getting an outfit together for my “This is 30” Instagram post. I thought about where I could get a pretty shot and the message I wanted the whole world to gather from it: she’s cute, and together, and 30 looks good on her – her life must be so enchanted. I knew I could curate an image that said something to this effect, but the truth is, my life is nothing like that. At least not most days. Most days, my life is just living. It’s day jobs, and laundry, and falling asleep with my date night makeup on. It’s school drop-offs, and marital spats, and hanging out with Izzy on the couch watching yet another Netflix show. It’s a messy condo, and suburbia, and paying bills, and setting the coffee maker. It’s enchantingly ordinary – everything I could ever ask for, and not exactly what I pictured when asked all those years ago, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”.  

As a photographer, I know the importance of making good decisions for a photo in order to draw out an emotion. Everything from outfit choices, to hair and makeup, to light, to location all contribute to the feeling you get when you look at an image. You’ll never find me hating on a curated photo. Being intentional about creating an image helps keep memories alive. A good photo can make us feel something in the present that we experienced in the past. It’s the closest thing we may ever get to time-traveling. 

But one of the things I am trying to let go of as I enter a new decade is this overly curated presentation of myself that’s so carefully constructed it hardly looks like me. The thought of putting together this presentation paralyzes me and stops me from showing up and getting in the game when I so desperately want to play. Nobody can judge me if I don’t give them anything to judge, I think, all the while sitting at a comfortable distance out of the arena and buried in the stands. 

Instead of participating in my life, I hide from it, hoping I can escape the critical voices in my head by not doing anything embarrassing – not posting a photo of me where my arms look big, not wearing that dress because I’m afraid of the looks I’ll get, not connecting with people I miss because what if they ask me what I do for work now?

This strategy has worked for most of my young adult life, but now? Now we’re almost halfway into the game and I’m starting to realize that I might not get a chance to play if I don’t lace up my boots and get in there. I’m tired of watching from the sidelines just because I want the world to think I’m cool and pretty and funny and serious and smart but down-to-earth all at the same time. Screw that.

I am enough – and do you want to know something else? So are you.

If you must know, I’ve spent the last few days wallowing. This last year, life sort of kicked my ass and I’m worn out, missing a few teeth and carrying a lot less stuff than I was when I started. It’s been a joy-filled and terrifying adventure, but the parting gift of my twenties was the realization that those things I used to stay comfortable (albeit stunted), to keep vulnerability at bay, to protect myself from looking uncool or wrong or stupid just aren’t going to work in my life moving forward. The people-pleasing, the comparison, and making decisions to avoid judgment and ridicule are not things I can take with me into this new era. I don’t have time for those things anymore, my life is passing me by and I can either step into it, engage with it and enjoy it, or I can pretend I’m too cool to dive in. The choice is mine.

The glorious revelation that comes with getting to the place in your life you’ve imagined over and over again without accomplishing any of the things you thought you would is this: you are finally free. So, you didn’t write that book, or build that empire, or start that podcast, or earn that dollar amount, or make those friends, or wear those clothes, or whatever it was that you thought you were supposed to do. So, what? Oh, well. You’re still here and you’ve still got a whole lot of life to live so, enough with the pretending, the shrinking, the playing small. I am where I am, and it’s beautiful here.

We’ve got one shot at this, my friend. One chance to live the life we’ve been given. One opportunity to make the most of the days God has made us for. I want to reach the end of them without a doubt in my mind that I honored this sacred gift, that I pursued the important things, tended to the weighty matters, and grew in the direction I was meant to grow. I want to get to the end of my life and be the spitting image of Christ, himself. The extraordinary, ordinary Son of Man. The loving and tethered image of God. I want to be like Him. 

I am committed to making this next season of my life a life I want to live. Not a life someone else wants to live, not a life that will make people jealous, just a life that’s beautiful to me and one that honors the Lord. I am committed to forgiving myself when I make mistakes, making a concerted effort to connect with the people in front of me, cultivating beauty for beauty’s sake, using the gifts God gave me, loving wholeheartedly and accepting God’s grace in all its various and sometimes painful forms. I am committing to being me, not somebody I think other people will like. This time around, I’m going to show up, get messy, and take up space. Such things are our inheritance. They are our endowment, our birthright, and I stand on the precipice of a whole new adventure ready to wear the family jewels. 

So, in case you were wondering…

this is me at thirty.

I work a desk job at my alma mater and don’t make any significant amount of money but damn the benefits are NEXT LEVEL, and that matters to me now. I am sometimes a GIGANTIC ASS and nobody knows that better than the man who I share this wild, wonderful life with, but I’m getting really good at apologizing and making amends when I mess up. I’m not some impressive, spectacular successful twenty-something like I always hoped I’d be, but I’m working every day to love my family and friends well. It’s some of the hardest work I’ve ever done and I’m proud of who I’m becoming…most days. I love taking and posting pretty photos of my food, my outfits, my books, and my people and writing some thoughtful caption to go along with the image even if that sometimes makes me feel like a cliche. My life is an extraordinary, ordinary gift and I’m not doing it better or worse than anyone else. It isn’t always glamorous or Instagram-worthy but it’s significant and that’s good enough for me. 

It’s enough. I’m enough. So are you. 

What about you, friend?

Was there a birthday you can remember that made you stop and reflect and wonder what the heck you’re doing with your life? What did you learn? Resolve to do? Let go of? Tell me in the comments below! As always, me, myself and I are dying to know!

xo,

Jess