How Will I Make It Through My 30s?
Finding true hope and strength to face the life before me
In my last piece, I talked about the process that I’ve been undergoing to prepare for my thirties:
I made space for mourning and grief.
I let myself revisit all the memories from my journey and experience gratitude for them.
I anchored in the good here. Now. In my life as it is.
I let myself believe in the good to come.
That’s a simple explanation of a process that’s been going on inside me all year, but there’s a lot more.
To be honest, I needed to think long and hard about my thirties because a part of me didn’t want to go on.
To be 30 is to enter a new decade. It’s not just another 365 days ahead of me. It’s 10 years.
But 30 is also the door into adulthood. So it’s not just 10 years — it’s the rest of my life.
Do I really want to keep going? Is it worth the struggle?
The part of me that doesn’t want to go on
A part of me is devastated by all the war, pollution, injustice, violence, and ignorance in the world. When I commuted to the office, I used to think about the insanity of 100,000 people sitting in traffic to get to a job where they make thousands of dollars and spend on it on stuff. Do they now know that they could use that money to travel and it would change the way they see EVERYTHING?! We are insane! This world is insane.
A part of me doesn’t want to be around to see neighbours bicker, read the news about mental illness, or be poisoned by genetically modified foods.
Do I really want to be around for a world where the next generation has to deal with our trash mountains and plastic-filled oceans? Do I really want to know what will happen to multi-national corporations that produce chemicals disguised as food?
Do I really want to watch this generation destroy our Earth’s resources with our mindless, careless consumption, without giving care to people in developing countries who go to sleep hungry every night?
Do I really want to exist in a world where my generation sits in offices concocting more problems instead of finding solutions to world hunger, child trafficking, and environmental degradation?
I’m not sure if I want to stick around for this world.
I know these questions might sound dramatic, but they are also the real and honest questions of my heart. The sorrow I feel about the state of humanity is valid, and I cannot, will not suppress with a Netflix binge.
So what are my options?
A part of me knows that if I stay, I will strive to be part of the solution for our world. That feels like an upward battle and I don’t know if I have the strength for 50 years of uphill.
At the same time, I can’t stay on earth and just give up: shut down my dreams, work in a dead-end job for the next 30 years, retire, get sick and die. I would rather die now than go through another 50 years of meaningless mundanity.
If I am going to walk through the door into adulthood, I am going to stay until I die of natural causes, which could mean I’ll be here till my 80’s.
How do I go on?
If I am going to stay for another decade, I need a lot more strength and hope than I needed for my 20’s.
I lived my twenties one year at a time, setting goals for what I wanted to accomplish each year. It worked and it propelled me to 37 countries, but I know the one-year-at-a-time strategy is not going to work for my thirties. The goals that I can foresee accomplishing in one year in my thirties are too small. They are empty joys compared to the struggle of staying in the world-eating machine for another 50 years.
So I’ve had to ask myself, and God, why should I stay?
What is really ahead of me?
In one hand I hold the beautiful life I lived in my twenties, crystallized in my memories of scuba diving in Zanzibar, riding buses across savannah, taking trains through Italy. I also hold the pain of losing it all, of moving back to Toronto and starting more a “ordinary life.” And in the other hand, I hold an empty bowl. I don’t know what will fill my thirties yet. I know that it can hold beauty beyond my imagination, but with it comes a thousand heartbreaks.
What do I believe about the empty bowl of my 30’s?
All year, as I’ve pondered how I’m going to make it through my thirties, messages started to come to me. From heaven, from God, from the Holy Spirit within, from zoom calls, from movies, from books. Piece by piece, I started to find reasons to stay.
The circumstances in which these messages came to me are very mundane, almost not worth mentioning. Most of the time, I was reading or watching a movie alone when something just entered my spirit. Here is what God said to me.
Reasons To Stay
1. Instead of dreading the next 10 years, can you look at all the good might happen?
What if the next 10 years will not just be a repeat of your twenties, but somehow better, because I will bring with it all the lessons I’ve learned?
“People overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in 10,” the popular saying goes.
When I was in my twenties, it was impossible to fathom 10 years. I didn’t even have the capacity. I was focused on making the most of my twenties, on becoming “someone.” Our world puts so much pressure on us to “success” and it seemed like my window to be famous and noticed was only for my 20’s. Most major pop stars and actors get famous in their twenties.
It’s actually a relief to have my twenties over. I can stop trying to make something of myself. I can stop trying to prove that I am young and beautiful. I can simply be what and who I am. I didn’t choose to be where I am today, but I also didn’t consciously choose to live such an adventurous twenties. It just happened to me.
How can you assume you know what the next 10 years will be like?
2. “The world is not yours to fix. I am the One reconciling all things. You get to play a small part.”
First, it cropped up in my Masters of Divinity courses.
Then it hit me smack in the gut during a zoom call with some Christian environmentalists. “We get to be part of God reconciling and restoring the world.”
Several times this year, I heard the message that God is the one who is rescuing the world, who is working all things out for good. The pressure is not on me. I am simply one minute piece in his eternal tapestry, if I choose to play my part.
Take the weight of the world off your shoulders, Anita. It’s not your responsibility to fix everything that’s broken. I’m working on it.
The question is, will you stay here to be part of my solution?
3. You don’t get to be the judge of what is good or bad.
The past three years living in the city have also shown me that I don’t see the whole picture. Some of the things I would kill me, like spending 20 years at the same company, actually work for people with different temperaments and priorities. I am wired in such a way that I favour adventure, beauty and freedom, but others are wired to favour stability, security and regularity. There is a lot I can learn from others who are different.
You don’t get the final say, Anita.
So the world is not mine to fix, and it’s possible I don’t even know what is broken.
4. You don’t actually know what your 30’s will bring.
Can you be curious about the future, instead of devastated by it? Can you believe that I [God] could use your life to make a difference?
Don’t you want to find out what will happen?
As I pondered these things in my heart, I received the ultimate message from God, sealing my decision.
Trust Me.
“I know how much courage it takes for you to stay here.
To not run away. To stay in the thing that scares you. To stay in the city and face this world. I know it’s not easy, and I see your courage. You’re not alone here. Trust me. I see you.”
“There ARE good things coming.
Think of how you ended up in these jobs, Anita. I think of that $6500 contract to go to Africa at 21. That trip changed you and changed everything. Think of all the things that had to happen to you so that you could keep travelling. That doesn’t just happen. Trust me. I was behind it. And I am still behind everything else in your future.”
“Of course you will travel again. I made you to travel.
You don’t have to convince me that you love to travel! I put this desire and this ability in you. Please be patient. Have I not already proven to you that I can open doors to travel anytime? Trust me. I am training you and teaching you things while you wait, things you need for the travels ahead.”
“Trust me…”
Trusting In The One Who Holds The Stars
The only way I can go ahead into my 30’s, and all the decades to come is to trust that there is a God, a good, kind, loving intelligence behind all things, who sustains all things and who has a good plan for all things.
My hope for my life, and for the world, comes from believing that there is Something Good beneath it all.
This God is guiding me, helping me along, teaching me, training me and loving me every step of the way, every day of my life.
Some days I need to see the whole horizon in order to go on.
Other days, I just need enough strength, hope, curiosity and courage for one day.
Just like on the day I’ll turn 30.
And every day after.
Infinite Love,
Anita
