I will be entering my final year in my 40s in a few days, and I have been filled with dread/ anxiety/ concern that I have refused to acknowledge to anyone (except my therapist).
I don’t think that anyone who helped me celebrate my 40th birthday with me would have ever expected me to be where I am at 49. For sure, I have made quite a departure from what I had envisioned for myself just 9 years ago. (Which, if you think about it, is really not that long ago.)
What a ride this life has been. How, if I fully reflected on the decades I have lived, each has been full of surprises. High highs and low lows.
I acknowledge, with certainty: Definitely more highs than lows.
Or at least, a feeling of brilliant, shining redemption from my low lows.
That is, until this last decade which is marked with many endings and losses. Great big, whopping ones:
Debilitating pain. A degenerative disease diagnosis. Surgery.
The end to a 24-year career that saw me grow and thrive. And thrive some more.
A career that ended, upon closer inspection, due to careful and intentional sabotage. Malice in action, of the likes I had never encountered before or since.
The overwhelming loss of life: some of my most beloved family members, including my favorite brother.
My sweetest sister-friend’s devastating cancer diagnosis and her unbelievable suffering… and her ultimate demise.
A global pandemic and the upheaval of “normal life” as we knew it…
…Which ended with a shattered-glass, no-looking-back, irreversibly changed, period — no, exclamation point, capital-lettered, new existence:
WIDOW! SINGLE MOM!
Also? Broken-hearted.
Also? Floundering.
But it didn’t end there.
Of course, inconsolable grief.
But also, parenting inconsolably grieving children…
…One of whom, as it turns out, is autistic. Which elucidates the true nature of seemingly impossible, “nonsensical” struggles.
Also, as it turned out, parenting one with undiagnosed gender dysphoria. Which manifested as various physical ailments that did not respond to medications, as well as depression and anxiety.
Truly, the darkest time for my child.
But also, for this parent.
Because it is always going to be harder, even intolerable, dealing with our children’s pain over our own.
(This, they do not warn you about in pregnancy and parenting books.)
Have there been more ruts I have failed to mention?
Oh, maybe a few more: the end of my passion project. And closing the door on Mike’s passion project.
Two other very definitive endings.
So there it is. A litany of endings and losses in the last 9 years.
And yet I do not feel broken. Or hopeless.
But anxious, yes.
What next? I think. The future seems a blank canvas, and I have few expectations. (I know to expect the unexpected now.)
In an effort to still my anxiety, I pause and consider the question, “Why do I not feel broken?”
It seems implausible.
And yet I know that these 9 years have not been all bad.
I have, after all, walked this road with my God.
A God that has placed people in my path to guide me, heal me, comfort me. To hold me up and speak to me the words I have needed to hear.
And not just me, but my children, too.
Even if I were just to consider my children’s individual journeys, I can see for myself how blessed they are.
As I am.
And yet these words of mine do not seem to encompass the length and depth and breadth of God’s blessings.
Because on top of it all, I have been inspired. I have even known joy.
Yes, even in the midst of grief and loss and endings.
I have had many beginnings, not just endings.
I have had wonder-filled moments and moments of indescribable, even illogical contentment.
I have never felt so much in all my life.
Consistently. Wildly. Openly.
I am not broken because I have been blessed through and through on this life’s journey.
God has shown up. In the most unexpected, extravagant ways. (Thank you, Pastor Keith, for putting it into words for me.)
I have learned this time and time again in my life.
When I was younger, God’s grace always felt serendipitous.
It is only in the events of the last almost-decade that I have realized that none of this is accidental or coincidental.
That God shows up in in-your-face ways if you allow yourself to see properly. And certainly, if you surrender to your worthiness.
I grow in certainty daily.
Trust me when I say, “Yes, Jesus loves me!” (As He does you.)
I really should know better than to fret and be filled with anxiety.
And yet I do know why I am anxious.
It is because I know now, better than ever, that life was never meant to be easy.
That we come to say more goodbyes, the longer we live.
That loss comes for us all, in one way or another. We are powerless against it.
And truly, the pain of loss can be blinding. Paralyzing. All-consuming.
And yet!!!!!
I have not been blinded. Or paralyzed. Or consumed.
Isn’t that wild??!!
These are my thoughts these days, my friend.
And all I have left to say is: Thank God.
Comments