Do I feel older?

This is a question that I have been asked a lot by different people in the last five hours or so and one that people often ask out of an awkwardness that people often feel because they don't know what to say, or maybe habit. Regardless. The answer is for the first time, yes!

 I feel older and I don't know how to explain it.

 There has been a significant shift in my heart, an almost settling. Not settling, like settling for the second best, but a settling like a seed into soil. Or at the cost of being cheesy. Like Settlers' (don't know if that spelling is write) into their new land. 

 That is more how I feel than ever before, like finally at the age of 27 I am ready to unpack my bags and stay a while.  Don't miss understand me, not move in for life and stay at this age, how I am now or where I am now forever, but ready to take where I am, who I'm with and where I am headed. Tie it all together and invest, even more than I have in the past.

 Invest in who I love, in who I want to eventually love. Invest in who I am and who I eventually want to be. Invest in who my wife is and who I believe she will be. Invest in children that we may have.

It is obvious to me that what I am saying may sound like commonsense. What I am really saying is that I want to be very intentional about what is ahead. 

Ok, just a birthday morning observation.