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Brittany L. Bergman

Savoring motherhood, building marriage, and living simply

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Looking Back on My Twenties as I Turn Almost-Thirty

Jun 14 34 Comments

I often forget that I’m not yet thirty. In fact, this year I was surprised to realize that I was turning only twenty-nine, or as I tend to think of it, “almost-thirty.” My husband is thirty-one, and most of the friends I spend time with regularly have already reached their thirties. That plus the fact that I’m a bit of an old soul leads me to associate myself with an age I haven’t actually reached yet.

I think my twenty-seventh birthday was the most difficult because it launched me into my upper twenties, which was close to turning thirty, which at the time meant “no longer youthful or fun, but bogged down by the details of life; often marked by wrinkles and sagging skin around the knees.” Is anyone ever really ready for saggy knees and crow’s feet? Thanks in part to my mom, who always made me wear sunscreen, my skin looks pretty good for almost-thirty.

I never would have thought I'd be so ready and so happy to turn almost-thirty. I've evolved into a person my twenty-year-old self wouldn’t recognize, but whom I think she would like a whole lot.

But now as begin my final descent out of the mostly blue, sometimes-turbulent skies of my twenties into my thirties, I find that the view is more welcoming that I initially imagined it would be.

//

I made the most of my twenties.

I still have a year left to go, but I don’t feel the need to fill this year to the brim with bucket-list achievements. I’ve worked hard at my jobs, and I’ve played a fair amount. I graduated from college standing beside my dearest friends, and I traveled to their weddings as they committed their lives to men who are the very best I could dream up for them. I ran marathons and ran from God and then ran back to him and flung my arms around his Daddy-neck.

I read countless books, switched to a new career working with books, and took steps toward my childhood dream of writing a book. I ate a lot and then stopped eating and then started eating differently. I drank too much at times, and in doing all this I developed healthier relationships with alcohol, food, and my body. I traveled and dreamed and took scary next steps. I had good days and ugly moments; I ugly-cried and laughed until I cried. My schedule and heart and belly were sometimes too full and sometimes too empty; these days were long and these years were short, but the time was sweet.

I wrecked and renewed relationships.

I loved my friends, and I failed them. I wondered where all my friends had gone and then learned to be a friend first. I built friendships and resurrected relationships I thought were dead. I pushed my family away and ran back to them, clinging tightly to what’s left of our once-close unit. I sought meaning and love and value where these were never meant to be sought, and I was broken and emptied before I was slowly patched up and filled again. I questioned my motives and questioned God.

I said goodbye to destructive relationships with people, money, and stuff, and left a trail of broken and imperfect steps behind me as I did so. I left an abusive relationship and became content in my single season, and then I met and married a man who is more than I ever thought existed and certainly more than I ever thought I deserved. I poured into others and let them pour their lives into mine, and even though I can’t say “I wouldn’t do anything differently” (because there are things I would change in a heartbeat), I look back and call it redeemed.

I’ve changed, mostly for the better.

In the past nine years, I’ve worked hard, taken risks, changed my major, changed jobs and careers. I’ve changed my hair — no longer hiding behind it the way I used to — I’ve changed my mind, and I’ve changed my philosophies and perspectives. I’ve been changed by my faith and my faith has changed. I’ve left behind a lot of the misconceptions I once took for gospel, and I dropped and picked up and dropped again the baggage I collected in college.

I’ve found new joy in the same-old spiritual disciplines. I’ve been stagnant and I’ve been stretched, quite literally as I grew another human over the course of forty-one weeks and as she continued to stretch out my body with her eating habits and my nerves with her crying and my heart with her love and unreserved trust.

I’ve broken out of my shell and retreated to long-time comforts. I’ve held the titles student, teacher, manager, copyeditor, writer, friend, daughter, sister, girlfriend, fiancée, wife, mom-to-be, new mom, learner, wanderer, beloved. I’ve evolved into a person my twenty-year-old self wouldn’t recognize, but whom I think she would like a whole lot.

//

My almost-thirty life looks at a basic level how I imagined it would when I was twenty—career, marriage, baby—but many details are far from what I pictured. I thought I’d be living overseas and changing the world through politics or education reform. I didn’t think I’d be living in the suburbs or working in publishing or enjoying such a quiet life, changing the world instead in tiny ways through the words I speak and write and pray. 

I didn’t think I’d be so ready, so happy to turn almost-thirty. I certainly don’t expect to wake up feeling different on my twenty-ninth or thirtieth birthdays. If my twenties taught me anything, it’s that change is slow and often imperceptible, but when I look back at the whole of a period — be it one year or ten years or thirty years — I can see the tiny moments collected and propelling forward and bursting open to create the new life, and I can see that this view is still such a small part of the big picture.

What have you learned in the last decade of your life? Are you where your ten-years-ago self thought you would be?

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Filed Under: Gratitude, Life Tagged With: choices, contentment, dreams, experiences, friendship, gratitude, joy, motherhood, relationships, simple living

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brittanylbergman

Brittany L. Bergman
What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaki What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaking, cozy, chaotic-but-strangely-quiet Christmas we had. ✨🎄✨

That’s a wrap for me on 2020—I’ll be off social media until sometime in January. May you be filled with peace and hope as we close this year but still wait for the close of this chapter in our history. 💜
I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; d I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; depression and rage; exhaustion and loneliness. But I can honestly say this is the weariest Christmas I can remember. I say that not to shine a spotlight on me, but to say that I have a feeling this might be your experience too. I’m with you.
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And so the words to my favorite Christmas hymn hit me different this year. They resonate in a place much deeper, more tender and true than ever before. I rejoice in the giggles of my meltdown-prone child. I rejoice in stolen moments alone in the dark, the room lit only by the glow of the Christmas tree. I rejoice in every video and every social media post I see of a frontline worker receiving the COVID vaccine, our ticket out of this nightmare. I rejoice in the vision that next Christmas might look more familiar than this one does. I rejoice in the hope of Christ, whose universal, creative, motherly love holds the whole universe together.
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On this Christmas Eve, I’ll leave you with this quote from Howard Thurman. I hope these words bring a slant of light to your day.
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“The symbol of Christmas—what is it? It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding. It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live. It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”
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Whatever and however you celebrate at this time of year, I’m sending you all my love and peace. 💫
I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in the nick of time.

I baked cookies with Selah without getting frustrated (first time ever?), took the kids on drive to see Christmas lights, and wrapped a bunch of gifts.

But here’s what I think did the trick, and please do steal this idea (because I stole it from someone else but have no idea who): Magical Movie Night™️.

On Saturday night, I stealthily placed a golden ticket under Selah’s pillow (which I printed from the internets and colored quickly with a yellow marker; good enough is good enough for Magical Movie Night!). We put Eamon to bed and got Selah ready for bed too, going through all the normal motions of brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, picking out a book. When we climbed into bed, I told her to look under her pillow.

She was confused when she found the ticket, and I told her it was for a Christmas movie night. “When?” she asked. “Right now!” I said. “What do you mean ‘right now’?” When it dawned on her that she was going to stay up past her bedtime to have a special movie night with Mommy and Daddy (sans Eamon), she lost her mind with excitement.

Bonus: Gramma was waiting downstairs with a bag of popcorn and Swedish Fish!

We snuggled under blankets, turned on Elf, and laughed our festive butts off. (This was her first time watching Elf, and it felt like the dawning of a new era. It’s such a big kid movie! And she loved it! Hold me. 😭)

Deck the halls, bring on Christmas, fill my mug with holly jolly goodness. 

I also acknowledge this has been a crappy year in so many ways, and I know many of you are not going to be able to access Christmas cheer this year. That’s okay. The real spirit of Christmas is light breaking through the dark, love making a way, and the beauty that can’t help seeping through the dirty, messy, horribly human moments of our lives. So you’re covered.

(And if you want to fake it ’til you make it, give Magical Movie Night a try. It’s the actual easiest.)
In which I couldn’t come up with a clever captio In which I couldn’t come up with a clever caption. There are signs of life but my brain is dead. 💀
“This is what I find most mystifying about Adven “This is what I find most mystifying about Advent: the period of waiting ultimately ends in great joy, but we can’t get to that great joy without intense, active, unbearable pain. In Advent we sense the mingling of anticipation and anxiety, excitement and disappointment, joy and pain, hope and fear.
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“On this side of history, we have the luxury of waiting with great hope, great joy, and great expectation. We know Jesus will be born, we know he will save us and redeem us, we know he will die and rise again, and we know he will set all things right one day.
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“But before Christ came, Advent was dark. It was lonely and unknown, as the Israelites waited in faith to hear from God, and all they got was… nothing. Silence.
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“Isn’t this more characteristic of the waiting we usually do? The waiting seasons of our lives are less often marked by joy and hope and more often marked by pain and fear. They are not often cozy or comforting but difficult and dark and even laborious.
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“We wait as a pregnant mother waits for her child to be born—there’s a vision of the joy to come, to be sure, but in the throes of gut-wrenching labor pains, we think we might actually die before we see that joy fulfilled. After a long season of pregnancy, when the fullness of time has arrived, the advent of labor ushers in the real period of waiting—and it is active and painful and raw.”
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// From “In the Fullness of Time,” a new blog post on @first15. There’s a link in my bio to the whole piece, with thoughts on pregnancy, Advent, and waiting well in an exceptionally hard year. 💜 Thank you so much to @first15 for publishing this post!
We’re in the thick of a collective physical, spi We’re in the thick of a collective physical, spiritual, and emotional season of waiting. A nonexhaustive list: Waiting for a vaccine. Waiting for the pandemic to relent. Waiting for test results. Waiting to hug and kiss and hold the hands of our loved ones. Waiting for children. Waiting with children. Waiting on children. Waiting for rescue. Waiting for rest. Waiting for the birth of Christ. Waiting for the birth of a child. Waiting for a new revelation. Waiting for 2021. Waiting for January 20. Waiting for justice. Waiting for movement. Waiting for stillness. Waiting to be seen. Waiting to fade away. Waiting with hope. Waiting with heartache. Waiting with anticipation.

Whatever you are waiting on today, may this prayer be a companion and encouragement to stay the course. You are not alone. We wait with you. 🌈
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Brittany L Bergman is a for-profit blog. Any company that I collaborate with is chosen by me and fits the theme and readership of my blog. At times, posts may contain affiliate links or sponsored content, which is never at any charge to you.

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