4.22.22
“What I’ve lost in eyesight and metabolism, I feel like I’m gaining in wisdom.”
I laughed out loud when I heard Lisa Harper say that eleven days ago.
Laughing out loud at Lisa is nothing new for me. The chance to hear whatever thing she has to say is always a bright spot in my week. I laugh because I can so often, so humanly, relate. And, oh, how I learn from her. (Her blue check marked Instagram suggests that maybe at least 267,000 other humans connect with that magical blend as much as I do.)
In this particular case, though, I laughed and very humanly related. Because, WOW, have I ever been thinking along those very same lines leading up to this day:
Today, I turn FIFTY YEARS-OLD.
I’m still not sure how this has happened…
And I think I might be doing it wrong. Because, so far, I don’t think it feels like I thought it was supposed to.
It’s hard to believe. My parents and I discussed that as we sat visiting just a few days ago on Easter Sunday. I told them that I know it’s a number that often bothers people, but I really can’t say it bothers me. In fact, quite the opposite. When I try to really let it sink in, I think I just feel… grateful. Haven’t we all known far too many people who would have given anything to live long enough to celebrate a 50th birthday, but never got the chance?
I think I used to picture myself facing this milestone and focusing on the old standby: “It’s only a number,” all the while trying hard to ignore what that number actually is. But today, I’m really not doing that, either.
I remember when I turned 40, someone saying to me something to the effect of how surprised she was: That she’d expected we’d have done something way bigger to celebrate. Truthfully, I can’t even begin to remember how I celebrated 40, but it probably looked a whole lot like I think we’ll celebrate today. Small. Quietly. The way that I’m learning, more with each passing year, is the way I most enjoy living my life. Taking in all the tiny, beautiful things present in every “ordinary” day. The time to notice and truly enjoy those things is what really matters most to me.
I guess maybe there is an expectation about how one “should” celebrate a big milestone, (and fifty is a big milestone…) and maybe at one time I would have pictured some big thing, too. But that’s just one more thing that doesn’t feel the way I might have thought it would. Instead, I’ve reached a point where I feel just fine about saying that maybe those “big” things just aren’t my thing.
But writing about it? To mark my thoughts? To maybe find in them something meaningful I can offer to others – courtesy of what I’ve learned from five whole decades on this crazy earth? That is my thing.
So, I’ve tried.
I’ve taken a few different approaches over the past week trying to write the things I want to say. About the stories of my life. The things that have formed me to this point. For better. For worse. The good. The bad. The things I’ve learned. The things I’m still learning. The things I’ve overcome. The things I still battle. The truth that, without it all, I would not be who I am today: The things I like - and the things I still work at every day, because I still want to be a better person someday.
I’ve tried telling it all in several different ways, only to reach one conclusion: Each of these observations – the stories that have formed my life - deserve so much more space than a paragraph of a blog post. In fact, they’ll each deserve a chapter when I, one day soon, write the whole story (so far!)
I’ve saved all those words for then, but the process made me realize that some of my reasons for feeling so grateful on this birthday also look very different than I might have once expected they would.
I’ll tell you about a few:
The hard things: As I’ve spilled words onto pages about the most formative parts of my fifty-years, I’ve seen a pattern: The hard things – as much as I did not enjoy them at the time – have turned out to be things for which I ultimately feel so grateful. I’ve learned from them. In ways that have uniquely qualified me to help others because I lived through them. I continue to live through some, and I know I’ll have more to come. That is just life. Jesus told us that in this world we will have trouble. But shouldn’t the experience of having made it through 100% of my bad days so far remind me that I can count on Him to help me continue to do so? (Plus, how boring my story would be without them!)
Perspective: I realize how much different my life becomes each time I choose to look at things in a different way. I wonder more all the time if that’s the thing I’m supposed to help others do in this world. To see beauty in the mundane… purpose in hardship… meaning in everything…
Self-Reflection: Recently, a favorite fitness coach encouraged all of us taking her class to think about any parts of ourselves that maybe we’ve left behind - without ever having meant to. Anything we’d like to call back into our lives now. I thought about that, and I liked my answer. Fifty-years into this life, I don’t have any parts I regret having left behind; only ones I wish I’d embraced and welcomed along on the journey sooner.
The Promise of What Lies Ahead: There is so much that I hope I’ll use this next chapter of my life to become more of: More trusting in God. More able – completely apart from any circumstances – to live in the peace that trust offers me. More sure of who I am; who I have always been. More content with that than ever.
The world can make us feel like we should expect to become less as we get older. Less energetic. Less beautiful. Less in touch with the ways of the world.
Like our best days are behind us. But I don’t feel like that, either.
Freedom: At this point in life, I’m certainly less of some of those things the world values so much, but instead of that truth filling me with the despair I once might have thought it would – I am finding that it’s filling me with a sense of freedom I never imagined! Freedom from so much worry; from so much obligation aimed at living up to those expectations, which I can now see never really mattered in any lasting way at all. Freedom to release things I once gripped so tightly in the name of virtue, having now lived long enough to have learned to recognize them as vain and even idolatrous. I do not have that mastered by any means, but I have now glimpsed how it feels to live free of them.
And that makes me feel like my best days are certainly yet to come!
I feel so grateful for having learned all these things so far, and I don’t intend to waste this hard-earned wisdom in this next chapter of my life.
I hope, in every way, to use this time in my life to do my part to help change the way that those who will come after me might look at it. Maybe we can stop dreading or ignoring any birthday; feeling the need to hide any age.
I’m doing none of those things today. I am grateful. I am celebrating.
I am still learning, and in so many ways that matter so much to me, I feel like I’m just getting started…
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal,
but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.
Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do:
Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,
I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:12-14