Today is my birthday. Yeah me! However, it is not just an ordinary birthday, but my 29th which means next year this time I will be, you guessed it – 30!

Now, attaining this milestone brings with it a whole lot of stress, anxiety and fear for some people. Some start to think about their youth that has been seemingly lost. Others think about how much they will change in the coming years. And as I reflect on this day, I have to admit that there is some of that because the last ten years, since I turned 20, have been great! I mean, I have done so much, met so many wonderful people, started a beautiful family and been to some pretty amazing places. I would not trade the experiences and accomplishments over the last 10 years for anything in the world.

However, I have also done some pretty stupid stuff and made some asinine mistakes. Oh, how I wish I could forget some of these things! But the hope is that as I grow and mature that I will leave these notions and tendencies of being a youth behind. As the Apostle Paul says in I Corinthians 13 – ‘When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child, but when I grew up (bolded mine), I did away with childish things.’

You see, all change is not bad. In fact, change and growth are necessary components of life. If I do not want to be the same person I was when I was 21, naive, foolish, with my head stuck in the clouds, then I have to embrace change. This is not to say that change is not hard, oftentimes it is absolutely brutal. But as a result, in the end, I become and you become, the persons that God intended for us to be.

So bring it on 30! I’m ready!

“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3.18, NASB).