I don't know how to be thirtysomething.

Caught between my twenties and my forties--between young adulthood and, well, just plain adulthood--I'm perplexed.

I think part of the reason for my confusion is that I am a church-going Christian, and I also happen to work for the church. And, as we all know, it's the thirtysomethings that are largely missing from the church. So the two places where I spend most of my time are virtually thirtysomethingless.

All you twentysomethings: am I romanticizing the decade I most recently left behind? Did I really know how to be twentysomething? Do you feel like you know how to fare this phase? I think having spent most of my twenties in school surrounded by other twentysomethings gave me a pretty good clue about what it meant to be twentysomething. And I'm sure it didn't hurt that most of the older adults in my life during that stage were used to working with twentysomethings.

But now I find myself in a strange no-woman's-land of missing thirtysomethings. There are a few of us around the church, but we're not quite as visible as the twentysomethings. And the older adults I'm encountering now don't seem to know quite what to do with the few of us that are here.

I love the intergenerational reality that is the mainline church. But I miss having space to be with other people my age. Most of the thirtysomethings I know are friends from other walks of life. We are figuring out together what it means to be thirty. But I find myself longing for a mentor, for a woman who's just a few more years into this decade than I am to take me by the hand and tell me that this uncertainly that I feel is normal. To assure me that I will eventually come to know what it is that I want to do with my life. To agree with me that the myth of the working supermother is both out-of-reach and dangerous. To challenge me to resist settling down if that means getting so tied to material things that I betray the truly important things.

Where are my fellow thirtysomethings? What does it mean to be thirtysomething? Have you figured it out? Who showed you the way?