My 31st bday is less than a month away, and I've decided that turning 31 is way harder than turning 30.
Turning 30 didn't bother me at all....31 is just about to be welcomed with tears. =/ Suddenly I see ssoooooo many wrinkles and gray hairs. In a wonderful blog I read the other day from The Unplugged Family, Cassandra said, "I won't fear aging. I say, bring it on. Every laugh line on my face is a sign of the deep joy I've soaked up in this life. The days of sunshine bliss and belly laughs. The days of seeing first steps and hearing first words.........Stretch marks from babies grown in my womb are love scars woven deeply into my
physical skin but deeper still into the frabric of who I am. Those scars
changed everything. Those scars saved me. I would never will them gone."
I couldn't have said it better myself.....however, agreeing with those words and living out those feelings are two different things.
I used to say I wanted to have a tummy tuck after having the twins (saggy skin with so many stretch marks that they're all connected, lol), but I moved past that. I am pleased, or eh let's say "content", lol, with the marks of my journey that have brought me to where I am today. I have 4 amazingly wonderful children on loan from God and those marks are just part of the journey. I can still remember my belly with the twins being stretched ssoooo tight and covered in stretch marks that it was literally purple and I thought I was going to spontaneously burst open. hehe. A deep purple that almost looked like blood in some spots.
Right after having the boys, I remember my skin sagging so bad that when I would sit, it would lay halfway down my thighs. I daydreamed of having that useless chunk of skin cut off. lol. Thank GOD it shrunk back...some.
My face has shown more age (in my opinion) in the past year than it has in the past 5 years...I can think of 4 reasons. bahahaaa. I don't feel like I'm as "stressed" as some think I am, but apparently the constant tending to my 4 babies and having them literally suck the life from me with breastfeeding has finally started to leave a mark, or many marks I should say. :P
I'm not a fan of invasive procedures to reverse aging, but I do think that for my 31st bday I will invest in a daily skincare regime. I know, some of you are thinking "SHE DOESN'T HAVE ONE ALREADY?! WHAT'S SHE THINKING!!"
Yah, well.....some of you sell avon, some mary kay....anyone wanna hook a girl up, maybe even a discount rate?!?! lol. I want something that works. I don't want someone with already beautiful skin to sell me something and saying this product made their skin that way. I want someone with "average" skin who's used a product that made them say "wow". LOL!!
On a funny note, I suppose wrinkles aren't always a BAD thing: 
And then there's the gray hair(s)....oh the gray. I honestly thought I'd HATE seeing those gray hairs multiply in number. How do we not notice them till they're like 10 inches long anyway???? Do they spontaneously sprout out overnight? Anyhoooo...I don't imagine I'll be one who colors my hair till the day I die just to cover my gray. You can quote me on that and throw it back in my face 10 years from now. I may change my mind. hehe. But I know beautiful ladies who'd LOVE to stop coloring their hair but can't. How do you go from coloring your hair for so many years to stopping altogether (once everything underneath is gray)? Especially if your hair is long?? It would take YEARS for all of the color to grow out to where you only have gray left. Do you just wear hats for a few years to hide the gray roots? lol.
Anyhooo...all of this rambling to say, yes, I see the whole concept of "growing old gracefully". But can I live it? Can I really EMBRACE aging? Cassandra later states,
"Loving age in myself and accepting aging as a God-ordained progression through
this crazy ride called life. Knowing, hoping, praying, I'm heading towards
something even more amazing than what I've been gifted with here."
I'll try to see it that way...really, I will try. It may take awhile.
Until then, be gentle with me on my 31st bday. When I'm down in the dumps, remind me that it's not about "aging".....it's about aging gracefully...not even in a physical manner but a spiritual one. =)
4 comments:
You have given me something to think about. I always assumed I would color my hair when it started greying. I never thought about what I would do when I wanted to stop! Oh no, what am I going to do about grey roots when I'm 80!!!!
Tiffany K.
I've been told that you can use really white highlights to blend the gray back into your already colored hair....BUT who wants to fry their hair into white blonde just to stop coloring their hair? It's a vicious cycle...coloring to cover gray. lol.
I haven't decided what I am going to do about my hair.. But, right now, I like me better without grey. If I live to be older, I am sure I will stop putting color on my hair. And when I was 25, I never dreamed that I would put anything on it. So, now I have that question, when do I stop..
Yowzer, and I thought my stretch marks were bad. You did carry twins though. It's just nice to see I'm not the only person with huge ugly stretch marks. It seems every pregnant person I know only has a few and they're barely noticeable. They all say 'shay butter'. Yeah, well I did that too. I was buttered up so thick at night the sheets would stick to me.
Well, for what it's worth you don't look 31. I'm 29 and my aunt thought I was 33 or older, geesh.
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