This is the first day of the series 31 Days of Lessons Learned from My 20’s. If you want to read all the posts in this series, you can find every post listed here. If you want to have all the posts delivered to your email inbox, subscribe here.

Wow, what a decade! A decade that changed me in ways no other will. 

I am 37 right now. But a young 37. I have been married only five years. I have an almost one-year-old baby girl. For me it’s kind of like life just started. Except that it didn’t.

There is whole lifetime that has passed. They’re called my 20’s, and for me they were the most significant years I have yet lived.

Today I’m joining hundreds (possibly thousands) of other writers for the annual #31days series. It comes every fall, but that doesn’t mean I’ve known what to write about for long. A dozen ideas swarmed my mind, but one question kept peaking through my thoughts:

What do I want to tell my daughter about her 20’s?

And so here we are – 31 Days of Lessons from My 20’s.

Of course, my lessons may not be my daughter’s lessons. And my lessons may not be yours. But my prayer is as my life verse states, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20). If my stories are used for good, to help someone else experience the abundant life Jesus promises, then they are not in vain. If not, I might as well wallow in the memories.

Who are these lessons for exactly?

My entire 20’s were lived as a single woman. Obviously this is not the case for all women. But even though the lens of singleness is what I look through, I think there are some universal truths of life in our 20’s whether we are single or married. So married friends, I hope you read along, make comments, and add your own thoughts.

It’s not all bad.

This is not a doom and gloom series. I’m not going to tell you all you’re doing wrong and how when you turn 30 life is over. Hopefully, instead, I will inspire you to see all the potential saturated within these years so that when you get to 30 you will look back and see a firm rock which you prepared to stand upon. And your 30’s will take you into the life your dreams imagined.

So come along with me through the lessons I lived and the years I remember. Let’s use my stories to help you create yours.

Now it’s your turn! What is one lesson from your 20’s you’d like to pass along to another woman?