I AM 30 TODAY!!!!!

It's my (all-day-long) party, and I can do what I want to (do what I want to)...

{2005: my first married/LA birthday}

and what I REALLY want to do is share my story of hope at my bible study. So today at 10:30am, I will speak at the Community Bible Study of Santa Monica (Trinity Baptist Church-corner of 11th and California).

{2006: our first joint birthday party--it rained but it was fabulous--El Matador Beach, Malibu, CA}

I will share what a milestone it is for me to turn 30. To put it mildly, I shouldn't have made it to this day. I should not have been on this Earth to celebrate this glorious milestone...BUT I AM HERE!

{2007: our 2nd joint birthday party--fiesta-themed--literally telling all our friends that we were rather unexpectedly pregnant! What color did I turn after the news?}

Old married woman that I am, I cannot help but celebrate this day without thinking of my other half. As you may know, the taller of the two obscenely cute men in my house turns 30 in three weeks (on April Fool's - no joke). To commemorate our 30th years, we will go on a dream vacation to Rome later this Spring--our first big trip since my stroke. This trip can only be described as a miraculous gift to us straight from God (by way of a kind gentleman in Birmingham, AL who offered us his Italian home). What a blessing!

{2008: our 3rd joint birthday party--kid-themed, "thrown by James, in appreciation for all his parents had done for him"--just a few weeks before my stroke}

As I turn 30 today, I feel blessed beyond words. My life is full and beautiful and fabulous and tumultuous and exhausting and difficult all at the same time.

{2009: the first birthday after "Katherine Lived", Casa Colina, Pomona, CA}

And I am so glad it is that way. Really, I am. Without the hard stuff, the beauty wouldn't mean so much. I am a very blessed girl (maybe "woman" now that I'm in my 30s? Nah, don't like it. I'm still a girl). And this girl has a full heart.