First you infuse my week with those strong, beautiful words, #furiouslyhappy. Then you throw down this challenge to a group of writerly women to declare why we are at the perfect age. Whew!
Here I am with Margi sitting on a plaster cow.
Eating the best local ice cream Austin has to offer.
Eating the best local ice cream Austin has to offer.
Margi feels like my younger big sister
who forgot to grow up in Oklahoma City with me.
who forgot to grow up in Oklahoma City with me.
My husband loves her. Even my Momma loves her. xoxo
What an inspiration you've been this week!
As an aside, may I just mention how good it feels to be included in this writerly group? Really good. I admire each of you ladies so much. Suzanne, the smart, quietly spiritual momma who writes her heart out at Periphery. Brittany who mesmerizes me almost to tears over at Vesuvius at Home. Jen who is not only a writing inspiration but a marathon-running one, too (remember she visited the farm last year to discuss her book with our book club?) and blogs at Jennifer Luitweiler. Jen in running the Route 66 marathon today! Rose, a sweet, funny fellow Okie who LOVES my gander and blogs at OK Roserock. Mama Kat. The Bloggess. And Brene Brown. See what I mean? Amazing women. I am in the company of truly amazing women.
Okay, here we go.
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At this writing I am just past 39 1/2 years old. By the time next year's earliest veggies are sprouting in an egg carton on my sunny windowsill, I will be 40. And that is exactly the perfect age for the life I've been given. Our culture sort of tells me I should freak out about this, but I just don't. As a child, the adults ahead of me seemed fairly traumatized by this four-oh milestone, so I feel truly relieved to be so happy at this point. Care for some evidence?
I have been married to the love of my life for more than a dozen fascinating years. We have had plenty of time and millions of opportunities to build an incredible bank of memories and traditions, a magnificently rich, beautiful life together. We spent most of our twenties together and all of our thirties. AND we are still young enough to not hurriedly enjoy our financial security, travel, health, and romantic inclinations. I look forward to growing old with this incredible man, becoming grandparents, retiring, all of it. Every speck. S-L-O-W-L-Y.
My babies are now 16 and 18 years old. Healthy, strong, beautiful, smart, talented, good hearted, loving, and each of them on a path to a very, very good life. Loved unconditionally, just amazing sources of Light themselves. My heart tells me that prayers are being answered for them long before my eyes will see proof, and that is thrilling. Even from this little distance, I am so grateful to see my girls become young women. It's a gift not given to everyone. Right now I am stable enough to help them and provide a home for them should they want it. And if in the future either of them decides to start a family of her own, then I will still be young enough to really enjoy being a grandma. It's the best of both worlds.
This feels like the perfect age for so many reasons. In (almost) forty years, I've made plenty of serious mistakes but have learned so much. I feel steady and calm. Past those turbulent, insecure growth-spurt years and now plenty energetic, capable, and imaginative enough to manage this silly hobby farm.
Right now I have both the time and the ability to train for my first full marathon next April, something that wasn't even on the radar ten or twenty years ago. And while I could have done so much more for my health back then, I am super happy to have a grip on things now, before the next season of life dawns. Perfect.
This is the perfect age to have a large, welcoming home for our friends and family. I am not slave to any complicated schedule; I get to decide my own work days and farm days. And I am no longer mystified by domestic things. In fact, I kind of love it, the cooking and the cleaning and the staying home and the being as quiet or as silly as I choose.
Because at this perfect age we have so many great friends! And if I am diligent here at home, then Handsome and I are always ready to have fun at the drop of a hat. And that is pretty golden. Speaking of good friends, another wonderful woman Marci and I were just this week remarking on how we both are enjoying deeper, more meaningful adult friendships than any other time in life. How incredible! What a gift. Not something to take for granted, folks.
This is the perfect age for being a true-blue bibliophile. Seriously. I lacked the attention span in high school. I had the desire but not the time when my babies were babies. And then for a while I was just too sad to read. Now? Bring me all your books. All of them. Every genre. I feel like maybe it's the curious, thirsty, philosophical women in their late thirties who should be issued mandatory reading lists instead of awkward messy hormonal teenaged girls. But no one asked me.
This is also the perfect age to really dig deep with the garden. (Did you see what I did there?) I have a couple of decades of true learning under my belt now, and I am plenty young and healthy enough to work hard at implementing all of it. Watching my Grandpa, I still have several decades to garden. Perfect.
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So, I feel really great. The perfect age for me. Yes, there are days when I feel bristly toward younger, prettier, more accomplished women. I sometimes wish I could rewind about twenty years to make better life decisions then and always be a size six, etc. But as the saying goes, why question broken roads that lead to paradise? Haven't I been given every opportunity for my particular dreams to come true? Yes. And I am so grateful.
There are also days and seasons when my maternal heart aches wistfully for the baby years or the school day years with my beautiful miracle girls, slices of my own heart that they are. But there is no shame in nostalgia. God has eased my memory of those deepest pains, replacing them with unparallelled hope and excitement. I lack the words to describe it to you. I'm at the perfect age to sense it. Old enough to sort through the spiritual impressions and young enough to still be amazed by them.
And how do you feel about YOUR life? I would love to know. Join Margi's sweet, smart challenge and let us hear it. Check out the other bloggers, write your thoughts, spill your guts.
Thanks very much for stopping in! Oklahoma is bedding down with sleet and snow today, so I am about to go enjoy a cozy day with Handsome and his Dad. Reading, Eating. Cuddling. You know, just being the perfect age.
XOXOXOXO
