Is This As Good As It Gets?

Usually, I’m not a whiner. I am surrounded by enough of those, so I genuinely try to put a positive spin on whatever is happening in life. However, there is something that I just have to say:

I am not a fan of being 40-something. Forgive me for using pre-pubescent vernacular in saying this, but this phrase succinctly encapsulates how I feel. Being 40-something sucks.

Whenever someone older than me learns my age, s/he clucks his/her tongue and tells me I am still a baby. Women in the media have repeatedly promised me that life begins at 40. I am still waiting to realize this supposed “youth” I still retain. Likewise, if life is supposed to have begun, I seem to have missed the memo on that one. I guess I am officially in the midst of what has been dubbed “The Mid-Life Crisis.”

So far, this is life at 40:

*My kids are teenagers. They no longer a) want to do fun things with my husband and me because b) everything is “dumb” (unless a friend suggests it). Conversations revolve around their time schedule and topic because anything we initiate falls into the category of “nagging.” I fixate on their deadlines and decisions – not because I am a micro-manager – but because I don’t want to see them fall/fail. I worry about all that I should still teach them even though they have no interest in what I have to say.

*Social activities are limited. My husband and I have two teenaged children, so we are paroled from the house occasionally. Even though the kids don’t want to do anything with us, we feel responsible to “be around” to supervise. This will continue until the kids move out.

*My body has a mind of its own. It cannot do as much as it used to for as long as it used to. Excess weight stubbornly clings in the wrong places despite efforts on my part. Gravity is no longer my friend.

Ok, so the aforementioned three aren’t THAT bad. They are annoying, to be sure. However, here is the REAL problem about being 40-something:

Is this all there is? Is this as good as it gets?

As a kid, I took piano lessons from a lady for whom I also babysat. Due to our close relationship, we often talked about everything throughout my lessons. On one occasion, I was chattering away, and I remember her staring at me and saying, “How can such a little girl think such deep thoughts? You’re an old soul in a kid’s body.”

It’s true. From the time I was little, I was on hyper-speed to grow up. When I was in 4^th grade, I was expected to make supper every night for my family (my mom worked outside the home). I had responsibilities at a young age, and that sense of responsibility fostered organization and maturity that might not otherwise have developed until much later in life. That doesn’t sound like it’s a bad thing, but as a Type A firstborn, I am prone to extremes in everything.

After high school, I went to college. Where many of my peers were busy in finding the next full keg, I kept my nose in the books and studied so as to maintain my GPA. I was not there to mess around and socialize; I wanted to get a degree as quickly as possible and get out with the least amount of debt. I was married at 20. I graduated college and got my first teaching job at 22, and I became a mother at 24.

Now, at 43 (and probably due to all the extra time I have on my hands now that the “mothering” season is not as busy), “what ifs” are common companions in my thoughts. “What if” I would have pursued a different career instead of education? At the close of my sophomore year, I HAD to pick a major (or I would start wasting $ on classes I didn’t need). I chose education because I liked to read and write. “What if” I would have studied abroad rather than stayed on the fast track to complete my degree by age 22?

Worse, “What if” all those hopes and dreams I put on the back burner throughout child-rearing and the early years of my career never come true? “What if” it is too late? “What if” the next 40 years are as boring, predictable, and unfulfilling as they are now?

This morning, I read the “dry bones” excerpt in Ezekiel. At God’s command, “there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them” (v 8). That’s kind of the way I feel right now. I am flesh and blood, but I don’t really feel as though there is a lot of life – spark, fire, passion- to characterize me.

Then, God goes on to say, “O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then, you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord” (v. 12-14).

And there it is. My focus is all wrong. Once again, I have made something about me, and it’s NOT ABOUT ME. God knows my hopes and dreams; He put them there! He equipped me with talents and gifts that He had determined in advance ESPECIALLY FOR ME. Once again, my selfishness and pride have caused me to turn my eyes inward versus upward.

Like a slap upside the head to affirm this idea, I read the following passage from My Utmost For His Highest. Oswald Chambers said, “We must distinguish between burden-bearing that is right and burden-bearing that is wrong. ‘Cast that He has given you upon the Lord’ (Psalm 1:22). If we undertake work for God and get out of touch with Him, the sense of responsibility will be overwhelmingly crushing; but if we roll back on God that which He has put upon us, He takes away the sense of responsibility by bringing in the realization of Himself.”

In essence, it means that when I put God first and make our relationship my top priority (listening, praying, reading His Word, LISTENING), my worries and “what ifs” are a moot point. They are vapor in the wind. The next 40 years suddenly become the ultimate adventure versus the ultimate dread.

Duh. I should have seen that one coming. Christ and His Word are all about new life. Whether it is dry bones or dried-up dreams, it is only through Him that life, of any kind, is possible. Huh, well, what do you know; there was a positive spin after all!

“For NOTHING is impossible with God” (Luke 1:37).