Just One Thing

Mitch Robbins: Have you ever had that feeling that this is the best I'm ever gonna do, this is the best I'm ever gonna feel... and it ain't that great?

Station Manager: Happy Birthday.

--Billy Crystal, City Slickers

In that spirit, I present:

 Melissa's Ideas on Being Awesome at Age 34, Completely Tongue-In-Cheek

1. Health: Get with the program and starting running 5Ks like every other woman in her mid-30s.

2. Nutrition: Buy a Vitamix and make green smoothies.  All the lifestyle bloggers are doing it!

3. Body Image: Increase ab exercises from 10 situps done over 5 years to 10 done at least once a year.  Come to terms with midsection.  Lose somewhere between 1 and 30 pounds without completely abandoning chocolate. 

4. Personal Growth: Increase my blogger cache. 

5. Relationships: Have real conversations in real time.  Laugh more.  (No snark here.)

6. Housekeeping: The bathrooms.  Something about the bathrooms. 

So, I had a birthday yesterday if it wasn't obvious.  I had cake and presents and family, so I had the good birthday requirements met.  I don't have any set birthday rituals, but I have been thinking over the last few days that this birthday is the first one in a long while that doesn't bring with it some kind of change or milestone.  Without some obvious goal for the year, I started thinking about what I want to be true of this year.   I haven't come up with any definitive answers as my Ideas list suggests, but I think it involves what any major goal takes: focus and one step in front of the other.

If I'm not careful, my goal could easily become "Make Jeremiah into a 'typical' kid at whatever cost to my sanity."  I think I've been operating in that manner for the last 6 months.

It hasn't made me the most fun person you'd ever meet.

After quite a topsy-turvy ride of emotions, I do have an aim for the year.

Trust and Obey.  

That means learning to appreciate my unique situation, looking less to what the "norm" is and more to what God would want me to do.  I do think many of the above ideas are things to pursue, but not because "that's what you do" but more "that's who I want to be".

Truly, I want to be more of the person God made me to be, and less of the perfect image I've cobbled together from the constant influx of "ways to be awesome" in which I emerge myself.

If I do, that is gonna make it an awesome year. 

Just one thing.