I write this entry on the eve of my 30th birthday.  The past few weeks I’ve been wallowing in a lot of self-pity trying to wrap my brain around entering my 30s. When my mother asked what I wanted to do for my birthday, I said, “sit on the couch in a dark room and drink whiskey while reflecting on the past 30 years of my life.”

Gross. Someone needs to write a sad poem in her journal and move on.

The past few weeks, I guess I feel as if I should have accomplished more.  But it’s funny how one week, only seven days, can make things different. The past six months of my life have been the busiest, longest, hardest and most stressful push I’ve ever had to do. I decided to pursue my dream. Some think our dream is foolish, some are patiently watching from the sidelines, and some are rooting and cheering for us loudly.  We took a massive leap of faith, having no idea what waits for us on the other side.

This weekend, First Fruits Homestead in Charleston, IL happily let us tour their farm, ask all sorts of questions, and let Linc ride the toy cars they had. As much as I’d like to think that we’re the first people in existence to experience the stress and unknown to follow a dream, we found out quickly we weren’t alone.  We’re not the first people to blindly jump and hope something catches us. There’s comfort in knowing we’re not alone.

We also began selling our flowers to Platform 322 this past week. We had only two goals for our first year: grow and learn.  We intentionally started very small to get a grip on what we were doing and to see if there was a market for cut flowers. *Newsflash* there is.

This past week Chris prepared the ground to till beds for next year.  We will triple our field size next year. Everything seemed to move so slowly as we were waiting for our seeds to grow and we’re in awe at how fast things seem to be moving now. We have lists for varieties that we will and will not grow next year. We are pleasantly surprised at the status of our little farm right now.

For weeks I felt like a curmudgeon because I couldn’t see where this was all going.  Couldn’t see how I fit into it.  I still can’t see where we’re going, but a path is starting to form and I feel good about our first few steps.

So here I am, almost 30.  No, I don’t have my 25-year-old body that showed the benefits of running 20 miles a week.  But my 30-year-old body also don’t sit on the couch for hours watching Netflix anymore.  Now it spends hours each evening harvesting and tending to flowers with mosquitos biting it while a hissing baby monitor takes a ride.

I have stronger arms that carry much more than they used to, a flower farm that is teaching me more things that I could have ever imagined, an extremely hard-working husband who sits and patiently listens to me as I always talk too loudly and flamboyantly with my hands and encourages me to keep pushing to be the best everyday, and a little boy who says over and over again “mommy’s flowers” as he points to the bouquets of flowers in our dining room during dinner time.

So here’s an updated poem for my journal:

flowers called her name
she needed change, so she went
her roots are growing