10 Things I Learned/Am Learning at 30

Oh, hey there, blog.  Long time no see, old chum. 

Last year, May was a monumental month.  We released our album on May 20th, I turned 30 on May 29th, and we played our release show on May 30th.  Turning 30 is one of those milestones people meet with many different attitudes.  Some feel it's an ancient number and curse the idea of growing older.  Some have a mini-crisis of all the self-imposed life things that were supposed to happen by that age.  Some simply deny it, publicly celebrating the anniversary of their 29th birthday for the rest of their days.  Some don't care.  Others are all about being 30. 

Tangent: I was probably 28 when I saw this movie for the first time, and I bawled my eyes out faced with a story that played out the possibility of living life apart from the man you both like and love best.  We are talking ugly, hiccuping cry.  I may or may not have trouble separating movies from reality.  
And I may or may not have a flair for the dramatic.

I probably fell somewhere in middle of these extremes - I thought about it a lot, so I felt rather introspective about completing my thirtieth year on the planet.  I mulled over the ways I had grown and the things I was learning, thinking I wanted to write it all down sometime.  I continued to mull, continued to want to record all the thoughts, some haphazardly scrawled in a journal, some trapped in the hamster wheel of my brain.

And then I turned 31 this past Friday.  Oops.  No time like the present!  Oddly, I prepared a lot for 30, but 31 caught me way off guard (it sounds so much oooolder).  It was not until late in my birthday celebrations that night that I realized I have to remember a new number to tell people when they ask my age.  Now that I'm officially "in my thirties" (WHAT THE WHAT. WEIRD.), here are 10 things I've learned and am learning a little over three decades into this life journey.

Amen, Michelle.  

Also, numbered lists are the thing now, thanks to Buzzfeed and the like.  

So I followed suit. 

1) Perspective is key. Some of our social groups have gradually shifted away from a good bunch of folks younger than us meeting many societal milestones before us.  We now hear friends and fellow musicians in their mid to late thirties and forties that find out I'm 31 and say, "Oh, you're BABIES!"  I'm not gonna lie, it's a refreshing perspective.  Some days, it feels like there are SECONDS before I will be too old to do anything in my life.  And then other days, I see decades that stretch out before me like the sea.  Mixed ages and places from the people I surround myself with give me a more mixed and healthy perspective.

2) On that note, comparison is one of the devil's best inventions.  Far too many days have gone by with me curled in an incapacitated heap, using other people's stories to judge my own life.  "So and so started doing music full time at 22, so I'm way too late."  "That girl wrote an incredible album at 17. What am I doing with my life?!"  "She reads books by candlelight and is always poetic and fabulous.  I just wish I did.  I fail."  LIES.  Who am I to tell God that He is not creative enough to write a story for my life that is completely original and different than others I've seen??  When I measure myself by their stories, all growth and motivation stops.  When I start living my own, God can move.

3) Speaking of perspective, I'm not the first person to feel what I feel.  God so gently emphasized this at a women's gathering called IF in February 2014, where I was self-deprecatingly pouring my heart out to answer one of our dinner discussion questions and the 70 year old woman beside me matter-of-factly said, "Oh, honey.  You're way too hard on yourself.  It's not as bad as all that."  Most of my relationships for a while had been either peer or in a mentor-like relationship with a younger woman.  Now I've finally followed through and reached out to some older women who have already navigated some of these life stages, and go figure, it's completely relieving and they have wisdom and grace and can speak into my so-called hot mess.

4) I'm more aware of trends.  More specifically, I'm more self-aware of finding that I like things because they have been strategically marketed and are part of a trend.  When I find myself totally crushing on owls, and also hear other girls gush to me "Oh my gosh, I LOVE owls too!!" it is no accident.  This is notable not just in awareness, but in life and purchasing decisions.  I may like owls now, but I might not like them nearly so much five years from now.  So maybe I don't need to buy that precious owl-related piece of home décor.  It sounds kind of obvious, I suppose, but I was oblivious to this for a while.  It's okay to enjoy things in the moment, but if I can better discern what's truly worth investing in, then that's progress in my book.

5) I'm a little less emotional.  A little.  Just a smidge.  Maybe not.  It may just be that I've been able to not let emotion fuel reactions as much - it's not always the driving force like it used to be.  Self-control is a fruit of the Spirit, and it's one that's finally growing more as I grow.  (Chris is praising the heavens.)

6) I am what I eat.  This is still a road with highs and lows... but curbing my sugar intake really does decrease the amount that I crave it, and I feel better when I eat more vegetables and fresh food.  This is not rocket science.  But eating whatever I wanted for years is a habit that has taken a long time to get away from.

7) Do I own my stuff, or does it own me?  Most of these personal revelations could be their own blog posts, and this one definitely could be.  For now, I will say it has been an uphill climb to start to release the grip I have on material possessions and to start to simplify.  But each time I gain a foothold and fill another bag of stuff I don't need, my spirit feels lighter and a sense of freedom starts to return.  There are lots of ways addictive personalities and sin can manifest themselves.  Becoming aware and vigilant about such things is hard but so worth it.

8) Forgiveness is a [daily] choice.  This has been a big one.  Living into forgiveness in tough situations involves daily sacrificing my pride and taking my thoughts captive, rather than falling back into bitterness with the next offensive word or careless action from the person.  Forgiveness in less dire situations is more frequent and still requires sacrificing my pride and taking my thoughts captive, to not lose precious time holding out on those I love most.  It also requires not waiting for an apology.

9) Self-analysis is good, to a point.  I have gone through my mid to late-twenties phase of starting to look at my life dynamics through the eyes of an adult.  I see the actions of my parents in different light, I see cause and effect in past situations, I can trace back through patterns and stimuli.  Chris will tell you that I think about these things a great deal.  And it can be well and good and helpful...  But there comes a time when continuing to focus on the root cause and pointing blame is just looking backward.  If I want any kind of redemption in this life, I need to acknowledge these things for what they are and start to take steps forward and away from them. 

10) You get one step at a time.  I'm a planner.  I would like the entire life plan, the end game, the list of instructions, the manual, anything that will enable me to chart my course and go.  Unfortunately, this is not often how God works.  He told Abraham, "Go where I will send you."  He gives countless people in Scripture one instruction at a time.  When they follow and prove faithful in that step, they are given more.  I am finally learning to be content with the one step and to act on it.  Waiting for the whole set results in me not moving at all.

All this to say, it is comforting to know I'm a work in progress.  Amid the occasional panic moments of LIFE IS TOO DANG FAST, I'm grateful for the chance to know myself better, to know God better, and to mature.  There are lots of movies based around going back in time to when life was "better."  I wouldn't trade this life stage for high school, college, the twenties... any of it.  I am sure I will look back when I'm 41 and think, "Gosh, I knew NOTHING!"  It will be a sign that I kept growing and changing.  And I think that's the point.



Get Up and Walk.

In the past couple weeks, we've had some intense conversations with some dear friends whose lives have suddenly been turned upside down.  They are going through life-defining moments in which the things they hold dear have disappeared, leaving them options - options to find another person to cling to instead, to throw themselves into activities that would distract them from pain, or to run headlong after God, with nothing holding them back from pursuit of Him and His dreams for their lives that they now might have open ears to hear.

And if I'm honest, a weird part of me envies them.

I've had defining moments like this, and they've completely shaped my life.  Chris has had them too, and some of our stories are why we have these conversations with people - we've walked those roads and come out on the other end knowing God better and learning so much about life.  But when the years keep passing after these mega-trial moments, sometimes it starts to become a little fuzzy.  Life starts to seem a little more comfortable when there's not devastating heartbreak threatening to keep me in bed for a week or thrilling tough life circumstances that create an incredible need to depend on the Lord for survival.  Were times like that fun?  Heavens, no.  Horrid.  But I feel like I had the chance to really hear what God had been trying to say to me all along about who I was and what He had created me for.  Now, in comfy times, I know in my head that those truths have not changed... but they do seem a lot less life-or-death, above-all-else important.

"It is not enough to say I love you...
It is not enough to say I need you so...
'Cause every time my tongue does move
It's only words from me to you
And love requires a deeper proof
To do the last thing I'd want to do
For you..."

And I start to stumble.  I start to sink, fractions of an inch at a time, into having a head knowledge of what I feel like I'm supposed to be doing and knowing the joy it brings my heart, but having miles of space between a life like that and what my life really looks like.  And those miles start to look like an impossible frigid desert, full of brush and debris and massive landforms and terrible weather that would prevent me from going much farther past the tiptoes I have in past the boundary.

The terrain gets even more intense when I look at the mountain on the other side, where people who are younger and cuter than me are having a big successful musical ministry party.  Clearly they know some kind of secret I don't, because they picked up and moved to Nashville and now are magically able to support themselves touring for a living and putting out new records all the time.  And others of them must have magical genes because they're barely 22 and writing new songs like a boss to huge critical acclaim.  And others who seem to have lots in common with me, but clearly care about what they're doing more and are better at it because they've booked 20 shows to the one I've chased down.  And clearly they must have more faith than me because I'm not at that party on the mountain with them.  And after all, I'm 28, and that's close to 30, and isn't 30 a bit old to be still trying to think about all this and not have significant progress made towards those goals, to still be stuck in the frigid sand and snow?

"It is not enough to find time for you soon...
It is not enough to give what I would give up anyway,
It is not enough - it is not love."

Which is the mud-slinging, wallowing pity party I throw myself back on the other side of the desert before one of these on-fire, life-defining-moment women (you can read her inspiring blog posts and get convicted about your life here) stops my poor-me celebration with one look and says, "That's comparison.  You are comparing.  Stop it."

She's right.  I am.  I am comparing my life and my inside struggles and sins with only the shiny pretty outside of somebody else's life.  Who is not me.  Who has nothing to do with what God has whispered he wants me to do.  I don't recall ever getting a word from the Lord that said "Jenna, my calling on your life is for you to try to mimic ____________'s life.  They're doing things right.  You aren't creative enough to live your own life.  So, my child, try to live theirs."

But I live like that's what He said.  Like a jealous older brother watching his younger brother, who wasted all of his money but came to apologize, get a big party thrown for his repentance while I sit thinking I never got anything like that my whole life.  Even though everything my Father ever could - and DID - give is surrounding me at my fingertips.  Oh, but for my blindness, I could be enjoying these riches instead of glaring at somebody else's!

Like a beggar who sits, lame.  And begging for Jesus' healing power to come over his life because he can't forsee it ever going differently otherwise - he sees everyone walking by him every day, doing the thing he wishes he could do but is positive he can't.  And Jesus looking at him and saying "Get up and walk."

"'Cause love is an easy word to choose
But weakens the more I overuse
It acts as a cover for the flaw
That saving myself is all I want
To do..."


Get up and walk, Jenna.  The lie that some far off moment is going to come, when THEN I will be successful and satisfied and living out God's purposes immaculately, is just that - a lie.  What am I doing about it RIGHT NOW?  If the answer is nothing, then nothing will come of it.  If I could just change my answer to be something more consistently, I bet something would come of it more often.  Stop bemoaning what could be and isn't, and JUST. DO. SOMETHING. NOW.

"I'm done loving with the words I say
But not with selfishness my deeds convey
I wanna be love
I'm done faking authenticity
I'm not getting up off of my knees 
Til I can be love"

The song I'm writing here and sharing with you (before I even get Chris to edit it and make it better!) wasn't about this originally.  But it certainly describes the present moment.  I am called to love the Lord with the gifts he has given to me.  And brooding about my supposed inability to do so or the timing of it all is a sad replacement for what I could be doing in that moment - living out love by writing the songs He's placed in my heart and letting God take care of what He wants to do with them, to do with me.

"I'm done, I'm done living for me
I want, I want to be a living sacrifice
And give my life for you..."

God, you have to bring me to this place again and again.  I'm so sorry for the time I waste doing this instead of just believing Your promises and living like who You meant me to be, not some imaginary version that I've created in my head that I'm supposed to be measuring up to.  I will try to be me.  And I will try to let go of trying to plan and control my life and instead offer it to You and let You have a turn.