I didn't notice it was my birthday until I had been awake for about an hour. It just isn't really that big a deal to me.
Last night my husband was on call and my kids had a big youth event, so we went out to dinner the night before my birthday anyway, and it was fun. I didn't receive any birthday presents; I'm really not into them. Honest. What we did do was to buy stuff I had recently lost (my iPod and my Blackberry charger) and recently broken (my blender). My husband was really upset that he was buying me a blender on my birthday, sure that that made him a bad husband, but I told him that's what I wanted, so we went out and chose one. So I still received stuff, even if I bought it myself. It was just my own fault that I didn't have those things in the first place, and I felt a little guilty replacing them until my birthday.
I'm not a gift person. It's so down the list on my love language test that it doesn't even register. For Mother's Day I just asked the kids to write me letters, and they did, and that meant more to me than anything they could buy.
But nevertheless, presents or no presents, birthdays inevitably are times to reflect. And reflect I did.
You see, I have now past that milestone that is 40, and when I was in my early 20s, I made several goals for myself that I would reach by 40.
Let's just say that I haven't reached any of them.
But that's not failure; it's just that my priorities have changed. When I was younger, I thought I'd be this fabulous entrepreneur, starting a huge company. Or I thought I'd be a big university professor, or somebody "important". What I failed to realize is that once I had kids, I'd deem what was important to relate to them, and them only. All the rest was merely a sideshow.
This last year has been a good one for me in many ways. I finally landed the big book contract I'd been waiting for for eight years (The Good Girl's Guide to Great Sex will be out in January). I started more speaking tours. My blog has grown a lot! (Thank you all my loyal readers).
But best of all, I've had such fun with my girls. And they've both made our international team for Bible quizzing, and so over the next seven weeks, as I have to get the edited manuscript in to my publisher, I'll be primarily practising with my girls and their teammates, and immersing myself in teenage land again. And I can't believe how much I really, really enjoy that. I just love my kids' friends, and I love getting to know them, and I love the competition, and the laughs, and figuring out how to calm everybody down.
I think that's more important than what I originally had planned for myself.
I heard the country song "Nineteen Eighty Something" on the radio yesterday. It's quite clever. A few years old now, it recounts all the things that happened when we were growing up in the seventies and eighties, and includes this line:
"Now I've got a mortgage, and an SUV, and all this responsibility. And sometimes, makes me want to go back...it was nineteen eighty-something..."
I wouldn't trade these days for anything. You couldn't pay me to go back to my teenage years, with insecurity, and wondering about my future, and wrestling with God.
Or even my early twenties, trying to figure out marriage, and having heartbreak with miscarriages and deaths.
These are the good years. Everyday I wake up happier than I was the day before. And that's all I could possibly want for my birthday.
I have officially entered my 40s. And life has not come to a screeching halt.
I have approached this birthday with a little bit of trepidation. Somehow crossing 40 seems like a real threshold. In one's 30s one is still a "young adult", so to speak. If you're in your 30s, you're considered too young to run for major public office, usually. You're not experienced enough.
But lots of people in their 40s can run, because when you're 40, you have all the experience you need. You're not "too young" anymore. I kind of liked being "too young" for a lot of things.
Nevertheless, I don't really mind not being young anymore, primarily because I didn't particularly enjoy my younger years. With each passing year I have become more at peace, more fulfilled, and happier. As a teen I was so focused on finding a boyfriend or finding people to love me. In university I was tortured by the quesiton, "will I ever get married?" Once I did marry, I was worried that we'd never work out our problems. And then, as I began having babies, I was exhausted, I was worried about their health, I wondered at times who I was.
Here's me at 26, sharing some of my special days with my son before he left us:
And here's me two weeks ago, with no makeup, at a youth retreat with my kids:
Now I sleep all I want (primarily because my oldest is not yet old enough to drive. I hear sleepless nights begin again with the advent of a driver's license). I truly enjoy my children. I love my husband. I have found my niche in life. I'm no longer insecure about relationships, or about who I am, or about my calling. I'm more at peace with just being me.
I have been told, too, by countless people that the 40s is way better than the 30s, because you're far more confident, and I do believe that. I'm also relatively healthy, so I don't see any reason necessarily why I should not be just as active in the next decade. So it's not like I'm getting "old".
I did a bit of a shock last week while visiting another church to speak. On the wall was a poster for their seniors' group, which they called "50 plus". And I thought, "I'm only 10 years away from being a senior!" That was weird.
But then it hit me: when I'm 50, I'll likely have grandchildren. And I am so looking forward to grandchildren. At 50, Rebecca will be 26. Katie will be 24. Those will be fun years.
I think you hit an age where you stop measuring yourself by the years that you have passed, and you start measuring yourself by how old your children are, and what stage of life you're at. I'm looking forward to the Grandma days. I'm looking forward to the days when my husband can cut back from work a bit, and we can go overseas for a bit more of an extended time to do some ministry work. I'm looking forward to having more time to devote to speaking.
Perhaps we're scared of getting old because we're really scared of dying. I don't think about that much. I figure when my time is up it's up, and God's waiting for me. I'm more scared of slowly deteriorating, as I watched some of my grandparents do, but perhaps that's just another period of one's life when one learns grace and patience.
So today I am celebrating 40. I am confident. I am happy. I so love my family, and I'm grateful that God has given me so many to love. And life is good.
About Me: I'm a Christian author of a bunch of books, and a frequent speaker to women's groups and marriage conferences. Best of all, I love homeschooling my daughters, Rebecca and Katie. And I love to knit. Preferably simultaneously.
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