The Night Before I Turned 49

This past week, I completed another lap around the sun. 

If life were a race, and if I were in training, I’d surely feel confident that I must be making progress – because I feel absolutely convinced that each lap is getting faster than the one before it.    

I have never before been as old as I am today; and I will never again be as young as I am today.  

On the last night before I turned 49-years-old, I took some time to think about what I know for sure. I’d like to share it with you now:

I know that, at least so far in my life, neither the idea of getting older nor the number that has come with any particular age has ever bothered me.  Not even a little bit. 

On the contrary.  I feel grateful for the privilege of getting older:  A privilege denied to so many others.

Even if I could, I would not choose to go back to any younger version of myself.  I like this current version much more; with all that she has learned.  (Much of it the hard way.)

I know what matters - and what does not. 

I know that what does not never did - and that what does – really does.    

I am grateful that I have done the in-the-trenches years of raising my children, and gotten to the reward:  The part where I’ve seen them turn into full-grown humans that I really like – and can call my friends.  Their kindness, their wisdom, their character, their relationship with one another: Seeing all of those things blesses me every single day. 

I am grateful to grow older beside the same man with whom I lived the young part of life.  To share those children with him, and to know that the life we have is the life we built together. 

I am grateful for our parents.  That we still have them all, and for the uniquely special relationships I have with each one of them. 

I am grateful for my siblings, the ones by blood and the one by marriage; best friends and soft places for me to land:  For life.  I am blessed by my precious nieces who own such a huge piece of my heart. 

I am grateful for not only contentment with, but a true appreciation for where I live and the world around me.

For opening blinds to see morning sunshine. 

For watching morning fog burn off our river.

For the smell of rain and of trees blooming in the spring. 

For the mallards and geese and majestic bald eagles that grace the sky over my back yard. 

For wonderful neighbors. 

For evening walks with the world’s most energetic (!) puppy, and for the sound of children playing in the park.  (Especially after a sadly too quiet park in springtime 2020…)

For the experience and wisdom to know that all these things really are among the things that matter, and that taking time to stop and take them in – REALLY take them in – is an intentional choice I can always make. 

I know that bad days exist just as surely as do good days.

I know that what we choose to do on the good days helps carry us through the bad days.  Our thoughts, our practices, our focus, and our perspective… They always matter.    

I know that, at any time, things can turn around:  A good day can turn bad, but more importantly, a bad day can turn for good. 

I know that I can trust my heart and my gut when it comes to what I know is true and right.  Regardless of what anyone else thinks.  I wish I had learned to believe that sooner. 

I know that no act of kindness is ever wasted.  Whether I give it or receive it. 

I know that there is no longer any room or time in my life for anything not rooted in love.  I wish there never had been. 

I know that what I think today, I am not obligated to think tomorrow. 

I know that I can always learn and grow and change.  I never want to stop doing that. 

I know that, even though I have most likely already lived over half of my life, I do not believe my best days are yet behind me. 

I know that there is so much more I want to do and accomplish.

I know that almost none of it is about “me”. 

I know and am so grateful for a limitless relationship with a limitless God. I feel so much hope for all the ways in which it - and I - can still grow.  Not only in this next lap of the race called “life”, but in as many more as He sees fit to have me run.