My birthday was this week.

I am now 37.

If I’m honest, I’ve been dreading this birthday for awhile. It may seem like a random birthday to loathe, but for me it painfully marks the official shifting from my mid-thirties into my late thirties.

Or to phrase it another way, almost 40.

Just saying it out loud still makes me cringe a little.

My inclination this year was to try my hardest to let July 16th slide by on the calendar with as little fanfare as feasibly possible. I recognized my vanity in this impulse (and had dear friends who refused to go along with it) so I decided that instead, I would proudly own my age this year.

So this is me, owning it. I am 37.

I think significant birthdays are hard because our first tendency is to look at what we haven’t achieved, haven’t accomplished, or haven’t gained in however many years we’ve walked this earth. We compare our years to others, maybe we don’t have the career, the spouse, the square footage, the travel, or the wardrobe, that our friends have.

For me, the comparison all comes down to family. To children. My inability to carry them, and my still present desire for them. Those of you who’ve followed along with our fertility journey will know that for the past three years we’ve pursued IUIs (4 of them) IVF (2 of them) and every type of naturopathic/acupuncture/chiropractic/diet/ meditation/yoga/supplement under the sun in the meantime.

We decided we needed a year or restoration after our last failed IVF cycle in 2018. So, I left my full-time job in communications and we took a six month sabbatical on my family farm in Tennessee. Tim used the time to finish his PhD dissertation and I launched into freelance graphic design full time (slightly terrifying but rewarding). We returned to CO for a farewell tour of sorts this spring, pursuing our bucket list items right and left, spending time with dear friends, and saying goodbye to this beautiful home of ours for the past six years. Then we packed our lovely downtown Denver apartment into a moving pod and hit the road back east.

All the while part of my mind was on the calendar and this self-imposed season of rest.

Anyone who knows me, knows I like to get things done, sometimes to a fault. I charge ahead with only one thing on my mind, crossing that item of my to-do list. I know I’m not alone in this, Hands up friends, come on. Because of this go-getter tendency, I knew how important taking a year off would be for me mentally, emotionally, spiritually after our grueling 3 years of fertility treatments. What I wasn’t prepared for was just how difficult it would be to hit pause. Add to that the addition of an extra year on the old fertility clock and its been like a pressure cooker.

To educate those of you who have never looked at how women’s fertility declines with age, it goes something like this:

16-24: Most Fertile, but you should absolutely not get married and definitely do not have children at this age, you’re not ready.

25-30: Fertility is declining already, you can start to think about having kids, but there’s no rush really.

30-35: Fertility is now definitely declining, at 35 you basically need to have all your babies cranked out, so get busy. Side note, pregnancies at 35 and over are now referred to as GERIATRIC pregnancies. So thats fun. 

37-40: The faint sound of laughter is your ovaries as they desperately try to find any eggs left, Good luck.

So as you can see from this highly scientific timeline ;), your prospects of having kids after 37 are not the greatest. (Obviously everyone is different, this is a highly sarcastic and exaggerated timeline, but its honestly not far from what current doctors will tell you) 

So here I am, 37, not a positive pregnancy test in sight.

If you asked in me in high school what I thought my life would like at 37 I would have answered, 3-4 kids, written a couple books by now, running a riding stables/organic farm, trained as a vet, and work as an editor of a top travel magazine.

And there it is,

The forced acknowledgement of what my life actually looks like verses what I thought it would be like, is what makes this birthday so damn hard. 

But I refuse to succumb to the joy-sucking trap of comparison, and so instead, I’m going to thank God for my 37 years and focus on the things in my life for which I am so thankful.

• My faith. If I wasn’t a Christ follower, I would find this path even more difficult than I do (and believe me, it’s often not pretty) This journey has strengthened my faith in incredible ways because it’s forced me over and over and over again to submit my wishes, my timeline, my dreams, to God’s will and timing. It basically keeps boiling down to me asking myself if I know better than God, and of course I don’t. Does it hurt to sacrifice my dreams and accept that I will never have the story of simply deciding to go off birth control, and a month later surprising my husband over dinner with a positive pregnancy test? More than you know, or maybe you do know, and if you do, hugs to you. But the pain of that sacrifice is soothed by the knowledge that my goal is not to gain the things I want, but to grow in love, in compassion, and in my likeness to Christ.
• My husband. How on earth this wanderlustful girl from the south landed herself this incredibly intelligent, faith-filled, moral, witty, and supportive man is something I’ll never understand. His passion for justice, truth, community and education has led us from England to Tennessee to Colorado and now to Virginia over the past decade. He had modeled the love of Christ in every difficult season and I am a far better person for having him in my life.
• My creativity. One of the hardest things I’ve done was to give up the stability of a full time job while my husband was still in school. I decided to put all my effort into freelance graphic design and marketing support last fall and had no idea if I would be able to support us. God has been so faithful and rewarded my step of faith with a steady stream of work from incredible new and faithful older clients.
• My dreams. If you haven’t heard, a big part of my dreams are coming to fruition in the coming weeks as we are buying a 34 acre farm in the Shenandoah valley of Virginia. Our dream for this farm is to be a place of restoration for those who need it. We want to create a home full of rest, harmony and simplicity. Through organic gardening, traditional farming practices, and living in tandem with nature, we’re eager to return to a slower, peaceful, and restorative way of life. We also have dreams of not only continuing with our fertility journey but of opening our home through fostering.

Which brings me to my next announcement, starting in August, I will chronicling our farm life adventures in all their hilarity, frustrations, and joys on a NEW blog. I haven’t decided yet whether this blog will continue or will simply be folded into our new farm blog. I’ll tell the story through our social channels as well, but would love to have your support and encouragement as we embark on this new life. Details about the new blog will be coming soon, I can’t wait to share it with you!

For all my waiting sisters out there, I’m here if you ever need someone to listen, or feel like you’re the only one not to get that thing that everyone else seems to have so easily.

Thank you to all of you who’ve walked with and continue to walk with me, here in this beautiful, unfinished mess,

here in the waiting.