I finally feel my age. I know that sounds really silly. I really did not even think of myself as an adult for a long time, even after I was married. You’d think after 11 years of marriage and five kids, I would feel like an adult, but I didn’t. And I turned 30, and was totally okay with that. And then I turned 31. And over the past several months it has just crept over me like a fog. It’s not really that 31 is old. It’s just that I think for a long time I sort of felt in the back of my mind like I was just taking time out to raise five kids, and then once the kids are grown, I’ll just step right back into my twenty-something life where I left off. People often talk about “putting their life on hold” to raise a family. But the realization that has been becoming more and more real to me lately is that I did not put my life on hold to have children, having children radically changed my life. The discouraging thing is that it has finally dawned on me that when the kids are grown and Stephen and I are on our own again, I will not be the twenty-something I was when we started this journey, I will be old, and wrinkled, and saggy. Well, parts of me are already saggy. But by then it will be worse. I have two reactions to this realization: 1) Depression. 2) I am encouraged to remember that my life is not on hold while I raise my kids. Raising my kids is my life. I need to make the most of it right here, right now. There’s no such thing as waiting around for the right circumstances to do things right. Now is the time to do the best I possibly can because of the strength that comes from my relationship with Jesus, and trust that the Lord will accomplish His will through me in spite of the failures I know will be an inevitable part of my trek. But I would still really like to be a skinny, sexy Grandma. Hm. Maybe not.