One of my Favorites and Self-Awareness

So, this is really two posts in one so get ready.

One of my Favorites:

Francine Rivers is an amazing author.  Let's be honest, I really want to write like she does.  And aside from her Mark of the Lion series (so good), my favorite book of hers is Redeeming Love.  I just reread it.  It's one of those books you can't put down, no matter how hard you try.  Let me give a short synopsis.  Know the story of Hosea in the Bible?  It's loosely based on that.  It's about Angel, a prostitute in gold-rush California, who marries Michael Hosea, but can't let him love her until she finds God's love.
Here's what caught my attention more this time, though.  She can't have kids because of a procedure the guy who "owned" her for years had performed on her to keep her from ever getting pregnant.  As she struggles with the fact that she can't give her husband children, I'm right there with her, in complete empathy.  Just once, though, I'd like to see a book have to get through a hurdle without it magically disappearing at the end.  If you've had a procedure done to keep you from getting pregnant, how can you get pregnant?  These things don't reverse themselves.  I want to read a book where a woman struggles with infertility and finds out it's okay even if she doesn't have children.  Maybe I should write one.  Maybe I will . . . someday.  It's been in the back of my mind to do something like that for a while now, but I still feel like I'm too wrapped up in the reality of it right now.  Does that make sense?

Self-Awareness:

There's nothing that makes you more aware of just how old 27, almost 28 years really is, than hanging out with teenage/early twenties "kids" all weekend as we all train to be camp counselors.  Did I used to have that much energy, that much uncontainable joy in life?  Why don't I still?  Is 27 really that old?  I'm hoping by the end of the summer that maybe I'll feel a little younger even though I'll be 28 in August.  Either that, or I'll remember why I don't want to go back to being 20 years old.  Not that it was a bad year . . . I've just been there, done that.
It does make me look more at my skin, my flabby thighs, the fact that I would never wear shorts that short -- EVER!  It also makes me so glad I'm not in school anymore, so glad I already know who I'm married to, instead of wondering who's out there for me.
Unfortunately, it also makes me very aware of just how unathletic I am, too.