I wake up this morning – a thirty year old zombying toward the coffee pot, my good good husband sitting at the dining room table working on lawyerish things, and my boys sleeping beneath the hum of a box fan. It’s just a regular morning-glory, are-we-out-of-toilet-paper, dishwashing day, and I am thirty, and I am glad. I’m officially an “older woman,” who urgently needs to learn to love better and to fight like my Daddy’s watching. I’ve got to keep that little girl in me close enough to the surface that she’s peaking out my eyes, faith-strong, and imagining a high ride on eagle wings.

I’ve got to remember what battle this is – the nonsensical – where the seven walks around Jericho tumbles walls, where I armor up in my favorite pair of flip-flops, wear the Gospel invisibly wrapped at my knobby ankles, where I walk in Peace, where Seth says I’m beautiful, and I learn to believe him.

I’m thirty, so I make an inventory of my weapons: the burning coals of kindness; the nonsensical love for the stinky people asking for money outside of stores or begging for cereal from my high chair; the song that reminds me how purely God cleans; the Words: “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

In my thirties I want to see wild horses, grape vines, and monster whales, but if I’m going for JOY, I want my thirties to be Wide Open Singing, over my babies, over my crumbly counter tops, and over my forgiveness issues. 

I was wondering if you would sing with me? Will you start in prayer for this new website, (In)Courage, today? Would you sing blessings over the stony hearts that might go there for truth? I want us to fight by singing – because I’m thirty, and today we’re all a little closer to home.

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Happy Happy Birthday, also, to one of the dearest souls ever slipped into people skin. Happy Birthday, Ann Voskamp. You don’t fit here in this world. You’re real beauty. I’m grateful that He’s sharing you with us.

Tweet with me? I’m Amberrunsamuck.