So..... This is 45.

Today I turned 45.
To me, 45 has always been legit, "you're-getting-old" territory. Here I am staring squarely into it's face. I am not sure what I thought it would feel like, but I must admit, it actually feels pretty good. In fact, I was given the day off by the three gentlemen who currently reside in this house with me, so I thought that I would use the time dust off this old blog and write about it.

I like it here. On this blog.
So much of my life has been recorded here. It feels like home again, writing about what I want the way that I want. I have a few writing gigs and when I write there, I have to bend my writing to someone elses standards......or even worse....put my thoughts in bulleted points because "people don't have the time to read all of that" . 
No.This feels good.

So, on this momentous day of my 45th birthday, lets take a good, hard  (read: light-hearted and embellished), look at where I'm at these days.

I am living in a beautiful home in Colorado with JBA (formerly Race, on this blog....gonna have to fix that), Austin and Jackson. Savannah flits back and forth between here and our house in VA. We love it here and I am incredibly thankful that I was dragged out here kicking and screaming. This has been and continues to be, an amazing blessing for our family.
I started a business! Yep. I became a personal trainer and started an online training business. Train With Melissa . Which I quickly realized, I hated and needed to change. SO.INCREDIBLY.ME. My life is marked by things like this. So much so, that when I read Jane Austens "Emma", I was appalled at how a few of those quotes stung in their description of my own inability to apply myself long enough to any one pursuit to become proficient at it! It's true.

As Mr. Knightly observed in "Emma":
"But I have done with expecting any course of steady reading (insert any serious undertaking here) from Emma. She will never submit to any thing requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding."
Ouch. And there was more:
"Emma wished to go to work directly, and therefore produced the portfolio containing her various attempts at portraits, for not one of them had ever been finished...........She had always wanted to do everything, and had made more progress both in drawing and music than many might have done with so little labour as she would ever submit to.”

So, yeah. Thats pretty accurate, damn you Jane Austen. But this is how I learn. I pursue it passionately until I figure out what I don't like, and then I chisel it out and change it to fit what I want. And thats where my business is. The chiseling stage. I love to help people get healthy. I LOVE to encourage people in something that I truly believe will improve their happiness level and their quality of life. But being so closely tethered to so many people proved to be an unhappy (and probably unhealthy) place for this under-cover introvert. So. Not sure what is next for Train With Melissa, but here's to figuring THAT piece out, I guess. :-) (Not quite your hard-charging-feminist-business-type, I suppose, but it works for me.)
 I am about to break through the ribbon at the end off the homeschooling adventure race, with Jackson recently starting at the community college here. It is a very strange feeling. And while we definitely did not finish in first place, I'd like to think that we absolutely KILLED IT on the obstacles and we finished proudly. :-)
  What else? Still working out with weights 3-4 days a week, still eating whole foods, (except today. Today I'm eating pancakes and donuts.....it's my birthday), Still drinking wine, still doing hand stands and head stands and cartwheels and various other yogafied things every week. Still hiking a lot. Still not running very often. I like how I feel physically and what I am able to do. No aches and pains, no real issues. No complaints. (But don't even get me STARTED on my 45 year old skin at this point.....whole 'nother post, my friends.) 
 We are quickly approaching our vacation time and I am over-the-moon excited to be thinking about that! JBA and I are on the downhill side of a very difficult time in our lives and the lives of our family members. All through no fault of our own. I talked briefly about it here, if you'd like to read about it. And I hope, in time to discuss it all in great detail as we move farther away from it. There are many families dealing with the effects of unrelenting deployments during war and I hope to be able to lay our own struggle out there to offer hope and courage to someone else. I am thankful for those family and close friends who just listened to me over the years, even though they couldn't fully understand the situation, not having experienced it. That meant a lot. 
I am happy to say that we are once again becoming the happy, cohesive, driven, family-force that we had once been and that feels like the best prize in the whole world.
  So, sitting here at 45, I feel good. I like where I am in life, I like where I've been and I am excited to see whats next.  I am amazed at the path that God has carried me through. Seriously amazed. One thing has become crystal clear for me: He.Is.Faithful. To feel His precious grace and mercy fall freshly, on my life in such a personal way and on the lives of those that I love, is beyond words. I am 45 and I am blessed.

Cheers!
Melissa
PS~ Thank you to my Colorado photographer Wild Jinger Photography for the candid shots! Check her out on FB here or her brand new web site Wild Jinger Photography By Bronwyn Nicholoson.