This week I turned 41. I will be officially over 40. I have become the age where half of the people I meet will think – Wow, you’re old. While the other half think – You are still so young. And the reality is, they are both right.
Forty-one years. Even if I live a long life, my life is almost half over. Gone are the days of staying up late or water-skiing and not paying for it for the next week. Yes, my body has seen better days, yet from here on out, it will never look better than this.
But before you think I am wallowing in the depths of mid-life depression I will add this… I am still so young and every day, whether I have one more day on earth or 60 more years, is a gift. A gift from God to accomplish His purpose in me.
What will I do with that gift? How will I spend today? Will I spend time with him? Will I strive toward the call He has laid before me? Will I do what I can to care for all that he has entrusted to me (my family, my gifts, my health)?
Would I wish to be thirty again? Honestly, no. I have grown so much in the past nine years. I am wiser. I speak less and listen more. (Think that it isn’t possible that I used to talk more? Trust me, I did.) I have learned from so many godly women that the Lord has placed in my path. I would not trade a few less wrinkles for that growth.
I am not trying to brag – after all I still have a long way to go. And I can’t wait. I hope that I will be able to look back when I turn 40, 50, and every age after and say, “Thank God for the growth. Thank God I am another year older, wiser, closer to my savior.”
I don’t want to stop time.
I don’t want to stay young.
But I do want to be purposeful. I am tired of letting time slip though and missing moments of ministry, mommy-hood, life. I am grabbing 41 with both hands and running toward 50 I don’t want to cross that line kicking and screaming. I want to cross it running full steam, filled with the joy that I have lived another year, loved another year.
That year starts now.